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On 2023-09-07 12:21, James Knott via talk wrote:<br>
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cite="mid:730edf4d-b146-44af-b80e-4c37b3b6e201@jknott.net">
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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2023-09-07 11:33, Val Kulkov via
talk wrote:<br>
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cite="mid:CABFXWODdRCdPOhtoODg_c9sEeaHni-seyG2Nw0eg4XvaLkr_Kg@mail.gmail.com">
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<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, 7 Sept 2023 at
11:06, James Knott via talk <<a
href="mailto:talk@gtalug.org" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">talk@gtalug.org</a>>
wrote:<br>
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left:1px solid
rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">A friend of mine is
moving to pfSense or OPNsense, from OpenWRT.<br>
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<div>I am curious what OpenWRT didn't provide that pfSense
or OPNsense do provide.</div>
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<br>
Quite a lot. pfSense (OPNsense is a fork of pfSense) is closer to
the "real" routers from companies like Cisco. For example, it
supports routing protocols such as OSPF & BGP, which you are
not likely to find in consumer grade routers. On my own network,
I have 4 Ethernet ports on my router, with one connected to my
WAN. One is my main LAN, which also has a VLAN for my guest
WiFi. I also have a test LAN and another connected to my Cisco
router. I run IPv4 & IPv6 and can also use OpenVPN for remote
access. I have a DNS resolver, which goes directly to the root
DNS servers, an NTP server, connected to 3 stratum 1 servers and 3
stratum 2 servers. It provides stratum 2 to my LAN. It can do a
lot of other things that I haven't even bothered with. I have a
separate access point for WiFi.<br>
<br>
There's really no comparison.<br>
</blockquote>
Being closer to Cisco is not an advantage in my books.<br>
<br>
OpenWRT is a Debian based distribution that has been tuned to run in
a small footprint that usually comes with consumer appliances but it
is by no means limited to just that form factor.<br>
<br>
Out of the box OpenWRT is quite basic but there are something like
9000 software packages available to be installed.<br>
These include things like Quagga(BGP/OSPF et al), Openvpn,
Wireguard, IPSEC, Vlans and oddre things like VOIP packages and
docker.<br>
<br>
In general if you can find it in a mainstream linux distro you will
find it in OpenWRT.<br>
<br>
The GUI is ok but I have not seen many firewalls with good UI's<br>
<br>
As pointed out the minimum server size has grown over the years and
the latest versions will not run on my 10 year old d-link vpn
firewall appliance but I doubt that OPNsense would either.<br>
<br>
There are lots of reasons to not like OpenWRT, as is true of just
about any router OS, but lack of core functionality is not really
one of them.<br>
<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Alvin Starr || land: (647)478-6285
Netvel Inc. || Cell: (416)806-0133
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:alvin@netvel.net">alvin@netvel.net</a> ||
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