XG Firewall Home better h/w: UTM 110/120 Rev5 or XG 115 Rev2 ?

Hi,

to be honest, you will archive most likely more performance with some "home made" XG home. 

You can use up to 4 Cores and 6 GB RAM with the Home License. UTM120 and XG115 do not have such hardware. 

Check out the other guys with home build XGs. 

https://community.sophos.com/products/xg-firewall/f/hardware

Or ask Ian rfcat_vk ;) 

True, but if I can spend $150 on a used UTM or XG,- I would not be able to build one for that :)

and I think the performance that I'm looking for should be easily achievable by the above 2 units,

100 mbit down (full time firewalled), and 10 mbit up (for then VPN is running for remote access).

Hi,

the question for you is how many devices will be on your network and what will they be doing? How much experimentation  will you be doing with the XG to tweak its performance?

Yes, you would be very hard pressed to make a home unit for $150, but from other discussions modifying an existing Sophos hardware is a bit risky because they re not straight PCs.

Ian

I'm not worried about experimenting a little, and this would be a home router anyways, but I just wanted to make sure ...

1) XG 115 rev2 is faster than the UTM 110/120 rev5.

2) I can load SW-17.1.3_MR-3-250 XG Home on an XG with a swapped SSD.

3) It will do at least 100 mbit L2TP/IPSEC VPN

I'm not worried about experimenting a little, and this would be a home router anyways, but I just wanted to make sure ...

1) XG 115 rev2 is faster than the UTM 110/120 rev5.

2) I can load SW-17.1.3_MR-3-250 XG Home on an XG with a swapped SSD.

3) It will do at least 100 mbit L2TP/IPSEC VPN

Hi,

they both will do what you want. The reason I ask about the experimentation is the speed of the updates to the configuration.

Ian

Can you elaborate on that last statement ?

Do you mean there's often new updates and they might not work, or cannot upgrade existing configurations ?

Hi,

I built a lower power (10w device)  using a commercial box with J1900 (quad core celeron), 6gb ram, 4 intel NICs and SSD and found the XG GUI quite slow when updating rules etc that is what that comment is about. The box was very responsive to user websurfing requests.

Ian

Interesting, I wonder how good the "official" XG 115 units run then ...

The new one uses an Intel Atom E3940 @ 1.60GHz, almost identical to J1900.

I am still struggling about the fact of "Ebay Appliance".

XG is shipped in commercial version with Base License until year 2999. Base license has VPN (IPsec SSL remote access / site to site) included. But you cannot use any module else like Web filter, IPS etc. They are bind to ether subscriptions or XG home. 

So you could run this with the bought version in your scenario. But i do not know, what you will get from the Ebay vendor. I cannot comment the source of this device. 

Home is bind to Software Appliances only, so you would have to "reinstall" the hardware appliance with the XG Software ISO. Otherwise the hardware image will decline the Home License / SN. 

Correct, I was thinking about re-installing the XG Home from an ISO and running that way.

This should give me all the new features, and VPN access, etc.

Hi Martin,

correct, you might need to search h the XG forums for advice if your replacement disk does not install correctly.

The newer chip while slower should perform better because some of the newer security features are inbuilt.

Please update how you go?

Ian

Ok, I will play around with the XG on a VM and go from there.

Can the XG hardware host the UTM 9.1 Home Firewall as well?

Just wondering, I’m guessing the interface would be more responsive ...

Hi Martin,

I believe so.

Both firewalls work well on a VM. I have in the past run both on a VM, but to reduce the heat and power I went for a lower power box which works well. 

Ian

I don't want to steer off topic here, but just testing UTM9 on a VM and how can this firewall rule possibly allow L2TP over IPSEC from outside on WAN ?

Any to Any is set to Drop ...