Interested in Sophos XG appliances

Question

Hey All,

I been looking at Fortinet 60D, psfense sg-2220/sg2440, and Sophos XG 85/w. I am not pushing toward psfense and Sophos at the moment. I have a few question if you guys don't mind me asking. This is basically a setup for my home network which I like to secure it more with physical appliance firewall. I have about 25 devices that connects to my home wifi router and I have nordvpn setup on my router. I also have a printer I connect to my router via RJ45 which acts as a share printer wirelessly. My question are can I connect my printer directly to the appliances Sophos xg85? Do I need to buy a license or does the home basic license work for me and does it work for the xg85? Can I setup nordvpn on Sophos? How easy is it to setup? 
 
 Thanks for a head of time for answers, 
 
 Jett

lferrara · Answer

Jett, 
 XG85 is too small for 25 devices. You can build an appliance on your own (4 core and 6 GB of RAM) and use the XG home license. You can connect the router to a physical interface and use the wireless built-in (if you turn the router into an access point). 
 On Sophos Community and Sophos website you can find all the info. 
 Hope it helps! 
 Thanks

Emile Belcourt · Answer

Hi Jett, 
 Welcome! I agree with luk, the XG85 is way too underpowered for your home network (XG85 is really only suitable for up to 5 devices really). 
 If you'd like to custom build, you can download the home license and software for up to 4 cores and 6GB of ram here: https://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/sophos-xg-firewall-home-edition.aspx 
 Might I recommend the Jetway JBC365 from http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=27 
 I would recommend at least a 60GB HDD, especially for the amount of devices you have but if logging and reporting isn't majorly important then 30GB should be fine. When building custom you must remember that (unless this has changed in the last GA, need to check), HDMI output is not supported but on the box I've suggested above, it has a DVI output so you can use DVI-VGA adaptor for initial install. 
 Preferably you would want Intel NICs but unless your internet connection is crazy fast, you shouldn't see major issues with the Realtek NICs. If money is no object, there are far better mini appliances out there with Intel NICs and faster processors, the above is just a baseline recommendation :) 
 Hope that helps! 
 Emile

lferrara · Answer

Jett, 
 it depends on what requirements you need (Firewall, Email, IPS, WAF, etc...). XG135 could be enough. If you are going to use all XG modules, an XG210 is needed. 
 Thanks