ROUTER

youcanfindmike

Hi All,

Have an office of about twenty staff, thinking of investing in a new router with firewall

Also looking to block websites i.e. facebook, youtube and so forth.

Would we need to buy separate hardware and software or cis it possible to purchase a router that does all this.

Any help be greatly appreciated,

Budget around:1000 - 1400 euros

Regards

Mike

vibe666

you could go the corporate route and get the full kit and spend your whole budget, but if you were on a budget, you could do just as well (or better) a lot cheaper.

considering that it's only 20 users, you could easily get away with a high end consumer grade router like a Linksys E3000 and just install a custom firmware like Tomato or DDWRT on it which would allow you to do everything you want with regards to blocking and monitoring user activities.

depending on if your users will be wired or wireless and how you'd want to divide them up (if at all), you could then either get one big 24 port switch or three or four 8 port switches going back to the router and all in all save about 800-1000 of your total budget.

dyer

i would second getting a stand alone switch.. they are generally much better quality than anything most routers would provide in a business environment.. also, you're whole internal network won't go down if/when the router needs a reboot etc.

vibe666

i was more thinking that 20+ (wired) users into a 4 port router wasn't going to fit, but yes, that too!

I've seen hotels and apartment blocks with many dozens of concurrent users run by a single linksys router with the right firmware. they're great little yokes and very reliable. there's plenty of places still using the same older model Linksys WRT54G for 10+ years with barely more than the odd reboot to upgrade the firmware from time to time.

that said, the stock firmware on them is pretty poor, but it doesn't matter too much when you have so many powerful and stable alternatives thanks to the open source community.

youcanfindmike

I have a switch available to me.
Are Linksys reliable that is my problem was told to go with a cisco but I’m on the fence with regards the prices!
All the users would be wired no need for Wi-fi access in the office so a switch would be the way to go.

And with the saving I can head to Vegas

p.s. would have a tight squeeze for twenty plus wired users into a four port router. Maybe they can take turns to connect too the internet

Thanks

vibe666

linksys is owned by cisco now, they're just the consumer (and in this case prosumer) end of the company these days.

you'll still want a router to manage dhcp, firewall, ad blocking, website blocking and that kind of thing.

here's the firmware I use on my E3000 and it has all the features you'd want: http://tomatousb.org/ which is based off the original tomato firmware: http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato