I want to know what everyone is running and their preferences. Home setup with around 50 devices - ~10 mobile devices, multiple desktops, ~network cameras, eventually will be full Omada switches and AP’s across the house. Ideally U need something small as where my ISP enters the home there isn’t much room for the router. A strong VPN connection is important to me.
~100 download
~20 upload
With the hope of upgrading to faster speeds soon but still quite likely to be under gigabit.
If PfSense is the better option what’s subway to run it off? Can it be run off a raspberry pi or are they not powerful enough?
Thanks!
i went with omada and was very easy to set everything up, everything bought off amazon(prob can get better deals if you shop around).
Router: er605v2 $59.99
AP: EAP650 $128.92
Controller: OC200 $99.99
PoE Switch: TL-SG2210MP $169.99
~$500 with tax total
Followed this guide to set it all up with vlans: youtube
Might want to buy some short 0.5 ethernet cables to connect everything if you don’t already have. The included cables are pretty long and I’ll be replacing them soon so it doesn’t look so messy
If you do go ER-605 (which is probably fine for your use case) absolutely positively make sure you get a v2 or higher hardware model; the v1 is basically abandoned by TP-Link
I run OPNsense on a Protectli appliance.
For 100 down/20 up and 50 devices. ER605 is plenty - but it might be limited on VPN speed, or if you are using multiple VPN connections. I think ER605 is limited to 200 mbps for VPN, and a limit of like 20 devices on external VPN. The ER605 is both small and can run of POE.
But it is not as configurable as PFSense.
Er7206 here. I tried the 605 for a few months but chucked it out as a dead loss. It wouldn’t do IPv6 and the USB WAN wouldn’t talk to three different USB 4G LTE WAN devices I tried. So it sucked. The er7206 works happily with IPv4/IPv6 stack and I used the SFP port with a wired ETH module to connect to my primary WAN and the WAN port connects to my 4GLTE ethernet receiver for failover.
If you don’t need any special router features, staying in the Omada family makes things more convenient. However, I quickly realized I wanted more features (eg. disabling certain groups of devices, either manually, or on a schedule), and ended up relaxing my ER-7206 with a Firewalla router.
This answer really is - “it depends”. It depends on your needs and wants. I deployed the ER7206 at my FIL’s house as we just needed something simple and I liked the end to end integration. I looked at pfSense/OpnSense but I don’t want to spend my days administering, updating, patching, etc the firewall. I did want something that would give me the info I wanted wit the ease of admin. I went with an option you did not list, a Firewalla Gold as I was able to pick one up used locally. I bought a Protectli when I started down the path to experiment w/pfSense but now it’s sitting on on my desk waiting for me to decide what to do with it. (And I am 100 down/20 up too btw). So if you like to tinker - pfSense/OpnSense is a good way to go - has way more flexibility than the Omaha routers.
First off. Pfsense cannot run on arm devices, so rpi is out. I use Mikrotik, Omada ER-605, and pfsense. All do the same thing more or less. It all depends on you. How network savvy you are. Ease to hard. Omada>pfsense>Mikrotik.
I have messed around with pfsense it is powerful but I also need something straight forward so if I am not around the house internet does not go foo line. I am using a er605 and I am happy with the results. For $60 it is a good value with a straight forward interface.
I am using ER605 - first ver.1 and now ver.2 with my 1Gbps Internet connection and both routers were/are working as expected and stable. I upgraded to v.2 because I now use an LTE dongle for WAN backup. I am running latest firmtware as there was some bugs with DHCP and with general stability in previous ER605 firmware versions. I typically get months of uptime without any need for periodic reloads. Admin overhead is next to nothing, power consumption is below 5 Watts, zero hassles. Not a lot of features either but for me it’s fine, I have a lab with CML and EVE-NG when I want to play with complex routing features. In the ER605 I am only using WAN failover and VPN server plus vlan routing, static routes, ACLs and that kind of simple home office stuff.
The only reason I haven’t gone this route is every time I start pricing out a Protectli device I end up at like $700 and it seems dumb for me to spend that much on a router.
Old thread but curious what you’re using today? I’m looking for a budget router but was hoping I could find something that had at least 2 2.5Gbe LAN ports.
Could you give me a list of features that you found useful and what router you ended up choosing for these please?
ge this for ~200$ you can have very good unit, they also ship to US very fast under 2 weeks.
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804116114245.html
I’m using the ER7206. I have its 10gbe LAN port connecting to a TL-SG105-M2 unmanaged 5 port 2.5 gbe switch where I have my 2.5 gbe NAS and two 2.5 gbe windows 11 PC’s connected, one locally and one through a second 2.5 gbe switch in another room (with other slower gear there). Works a charm except the Omada OC 200 controller can’t see the 2.5 gbe switches, but that’s not a big deal in this case. The full-monty Omada managed switch solution was prohibitively priced for me but these unmanaged switches hit my sweet spot.
I’m not going to be able to remember everything, but let’s see…
I created groups of devices for each of my kids, so I can control access for each of them. I’ve got ad blocking enabled for most devices, and DNS over https enabled. I’ve got some family protections turned on. And I feel like getting the IoT network setup with my Sonos stuff was much harder on my ER-7206, but I can’t promise that one. I’m sure there’s more that I don’t even realize. The Omada routers are fine, but they seem pretty feature thin beyond basic operations.
How does the n5105 do for vpn?
I’d be curious if omada er8411 has the features you wanted.
I run Opnsense, wirequard, pihole and Adquard on this unit and CPU average is at 3% for whole Proxmox