Hey guys. I'm baaaack, lol. Sorry, [:)] Umm, first I'd like to sincerely, truly and humbly thank everyone who has talked to me and given me advice and info and help in all my messages. I really do appreciate it and the info given me didn't fall on deaf ears kind of thing. I really do appreciate so very much everything and everyone.
I'm posting here because I think you guys are smart and you know what you're talking about and I'm not sure where else to go and what to do right now. So I'm hoping I can get some help one more time from you all. Please. Thank you.
As you know I'm wanting to have a router with wireless and gaming and security stuff. As you know I'm not that knowledgeable. I do want to learn and I do have an interest in firewalls and stuff. I'm not sure why, but most anything computer related I am at least a little interested and seem to get it better then a lot of other stuff.
I've come into some money and was hoping to get some advice here on what might work for me if anything. If it's more then one product ok. I'd just like to get my network going a certain way if it is possible.
So what I'm wanting to do is this.
I'll have my ipod touch, Wii, xbox 360 and PS3. Then 1 desktop wired pc and my Macbook pro wireless n and wired. I'll use the xbox 360 wired most of the time and sometimes wireless. PS3 will be mostly wired and sometimes wireless. Wii always wireless. Macbook pro wireless most of the time and sometimes wired. I'll use wire for faster lan transfers. Desktop pc will be wired 100% of the time. I have currently the linksys wrt160nl that is wireless n and I can if needed use it as an AP only. It offers no security and no bandwidth info. So I need to get something still.
Currently I have an 8 port 10/100 switch in the garage that I might replace with gigabit sometime. I have a cable modem dhcp isp 16mb down and 2mb up connection. Soon to be upgraded via Docsis 3 I think. Soon as in maybe this year and maybe next year. No idea what speed the upgrade will be to.
I would like for my gaming to be left alone with regards to security. I would like them to be open. I need very much their bandwidth use to be counted and given highest priority so there's little to no lag. I'll need to know how much is downloaded and uploaded on the wan.
I need security for the rest of the network which will be the desktop pc and mac and ipod touch. IPS, GAV, Content Filtering, etc. No need for spam protection or anything related to email since we don't do that locally. I'll need wireless n. I might also wanna get an AP to put on the other side of the house for a better signal.
I'm in the budget of up to $900 or so. I would like something to be compatible with my gaming so they work fully online and also I'd like the appliance be future speed proof for when I'm upgraded to faster. If I need to put my gaming on a separate network and no security that's cool. As long as their bandwidth use is still counted.
Of course I'm looking for ease of use, but I know that's so far that I've seen only in home user routers like linksys, dlink etc which don't have any security.
Some features I'd like is
1: snmp and then some client on windows and mac to get the bandwidth info to show my day, week, month and total upload and download like mb/MB/gb/GB etc. 400GB or whatever. So total upload is whatever, total download is whatever, monthly u;pload is whatever, etc. I'd like to know what local device used what bandwidth so I know like my mac downloaded this much, pc or xbox 360 used so much download or upload etc.
Knowing what service/protocol is nice too, but whatever, no biggy I suppose.
2: I would like static dhcp so it's easy to create on my lan each device a static dhcp address. Linksys does this great because you have all on one screen this info. It has a list of connected devices and a pull down menu when it needs one and it allows you to put in a box the ip you want to give the device, type a name for the device if you want to or use the default name and then click reserve to reserve it. It's a piece of cake.
3: Anyhow there's probably more I'm hoping for, but it's ok. I wanna stop now and just ask you guys for some advice and help etc.
Here's what I've looked at so far.
I've used Sonicwall before and they were ok. The speed was terrible though and they just released their new TZ models that I was considering which looks like it increases performance over what I used to have a long time ago. I was thinking about getting the new Sonicwall TZ 210 wireless n. I don't know anything else what could be out there for me in software and hardware.
I know of smoothwall corp and open source, clark connect, pfsense, astaro, ipcop, monowall, endian, untangle. And then you guys know about my issues with Astaro.
I don't know if this possible but it might be nice to have a security only device, not a router. It does the security and counts bandwidth use, but doesn't do the router stuff etc. Just not sure if it could still count gaming bandwidth use and not touch them with the security. And not sure if this is a good way to go or if a wireless router is or what.
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