I’ve begun testing OPNSense as a possible replacement for my production cyberoam/sophos routers. I purchased a QOTOM (read: aliexpress seller) router with 6 NIC ports. All the ethernet ports are Intel. This version comes with a Core i5, 8 GB of RAM and a 64 GB SSD. It also has a toggle for wifi/LTE modem. Adding a modem/sim card will be the last thing I test. It is needed but not a priority. I have found some modems that should work with it but I’ll wait to order it.
Instead of writing “reviews” of the hardware and software I will need to do blog posts of bits and pieces. I expect this process to take a few months. I need to be comfortable with both the software and hardware. Many of these devices are going to be remote. Obviously you always want rock-solid uptime but I also need to be able to troubleshoot them almost exclusively remotely.
While the software is obviously separate from the hardware I will have to write about both at the same time. This is my first time working with QOTOM hardware. If this works I will be using much lower strength hardware due to power requirements.
I have worked with many different routers including PFSense. OPNSense was a fork of PFSense but has gradually become it’s own animal. Now with PFsense changing some of their rules I wonder if OPNSense will take of.
I have several cyberoam and sophos routers in production. I am very experienced with dd-wrt and Asus-wrt (merlin). I also work with Sonicwall everyday with a variety of models. While my Cisco experience (and now Meraki) isn’t all smart hands I wouldn’t consider myself an expert.
Lastly, it pisses me off that the latest security issues with Sonicwall and Sophos could have been prevented. Sophos was doing something stupid with their logins while Sonicwall says to just stop using their SSL VPN software. How is one supposed to use the VPN then?! Such craziness.