Can you recommend a router for home office?

toja

toja

toja

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Joined
9 Apr 2020
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I need a router that can do more than just standard Virgin Media hub. It will be mainly used for SOHO so that some working from home (WFH) and evening gaming sessions can be run by children while we are still working. Also, since it will be used for my little office, remote access such as VPN should be supported (at least 1-2 tunnels).
Broadband speeds of up to 1Gb expected, DDNS, VPN, usual firewall and NAT settings for Raspberry Pi projects such as a web server or smart home.
Any wifi router recommendations are welcome. Please post your router model used, what is it used for so, and why this one so that will help me to choose the best model. Price can exceed £130 but the range is up to £400. Thanks!
 
How handy are you with networking in general? I think with the speeds you have and the VPN and server hosting requirements then I'd suggest start looking away from all-in-ones (unless you go Mikrotik which has a very steep learning curve). So an appropriate wireless access point for your home/office (can't say which without knowing more about the building layout and construction) and a separate router.

I run pfSense on a Protectli mini PC which is up to the job and meets your requirements. I don't have your internet speeds but it has been rock solid for years on FTTC (via BTOR modem). It runs an OpenVPN server, runs three commercial VPN client interfaces with selective policy based routing out from the LAN, separate VLANs for tagged guest WiFi traffic (from Ubiquiti access points), DDNS client, port forwarding to my Nginx reverse proxy to serve a few select things out to the internet like Bitwarden and Plex requests etc. Once upon a time it ran tri-WAN with LTE modems in the mix too with policy based routing to ensure I always had sufficient precious little bandwidth at the time for my work stuff. Pretty much everything you're asking for.

Equally you could run another *sense variant if you have higher morals than me or for a small price and a very nice interface (but with all the power/configurability of *sense) you could go for Untangle for your router software. Also instead of a mini, multi-NIC PC you could go for a second hand small form factor PC with a dual-NIC card for a fair bit less but plenty of horsepower for gigabit routing and VPN. I know it seems like a lot and separating duties seems like more cables, mess and cost but in the long term it'll serve you well and you can upgrade piecemeal as new tech arrives and it'll work on Virgin just as well as any other internet connection type in the future.
 
BigT said:
How handy are you with networking in general? I think with the speeds you have and the VPN and server hosting requirements then I'd suggest start looking away from all-in-ones (unless you go Mikrotik which has a very steep learning curve). So an appropriate wireless access point for your home/office (can't say which without knowing more about the building layout and construction) and a separate router.

I run pfSense on a Protectli mini PC which is up to the job and meets your requirements. I don't have your internet speeds but it has been rock solid for years on FTTC (via BTOR modem). It runs an OpenVPN server, runs three commercial VPN client interfaces with selective policy based routing out from the LAN, separate VLANs for tagged guest WiFi traffic (from Ubiquiti access points), DDNS client, port forwarding to my Nginx reverse proxy to serve a few select things out to the internet like Bitwarden and Plex requests etc. Once upon a time it ran tri-WAN with LTE modems in the mix too with policy based routing to ensure I always had sufficient precious little bandwidth at the time for my work stuff. Pretty much everything you're asking for.

Equally you could run another *sense variant if you have higher morals than me or for a small price and a very nice interface (but with all the power/configurability of *sense) you could go for Untangle for your router software. Also instead of a mini, multi-NIC PC you could go for a second hand small form factor PC with a dual-NIC card for a fair bit less but plenty of horsepower for gigabit routing and VPN. I know it seems like a lot and separating duties seems like more cables, mess and cost but in the long term it'll serve you well and you can upgrade piecemeal as new tech arrives and it'll work on Virgin just as well as any other internet connection type in the future.
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That's an interesting option, it seems to be free too. Except the part where I need to source a compatible mini PC, an extra NIC card, and some wifi APs.
Did you run multi WAN config on a free version?
 
If you need VLANs and QoS / bandwidth management then take a look at the Draytek routers.

I have a Draytek 2860 and have multiple VLANs and wifi networks, some of which are bandwidth-limited. This is so I can separate IoT devices and make sure I have adequate bandwidth when guests visit.
 
toja said:
That's an interesting option, it seems to be free too. Except the part where I need to source a compatible mini PC, an extra NIC card, and some wifi APs.
Did you run multi WAN config on a free version?
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Yes I did. The community (free) edition of pfSense has every feature available.

I see someone since has recommended Draytek. There's not a huge amount of love for them in here, and it's been years since I used one, but actually as an all-in-one and a step up from consumer routers with some business features I reckon that might be worth something investigating. I always liked the old ones. Before VPNs got easier, it was the only solution I could wrap my head around in the early 2000s to create VPN dial in without going to enterprise kit.
 
Roll your own, £100ish you a decent used PC with low power usage, AES-NI to help with hardware encryption for VPN, enough SSD storage for cache/logs, an extra Intel dual port NIC. Add a PoE switch and the odd AP, cheap end that’s likely TP Link, Ubiquiti used to get a lot of love, but some poor choices and lack of transparency following a data breach have soured the mood. Software wise throw whatever you feel most comfortable with at it - People will recommend PFSense, but sadly it’s core dev team are hell bent on being absolute drama queens and abbreviated Richard’s at any available opportunity, so OpnSense is a better shout, nice GUI, more community orientated and largely drama/ego free fork of pf. Untangle is another good shout, multiple tunnels aren’t a problem, though you may prefer the paid version as it is a lot more capable out of the box. You also have the curve ball of Sophos XG, but honestly I wouldn’t, after that it gets more specialist.
 
For budget use, I would always go Mikrotik for routers, but their Wireless LAN is shocking. So if you need a single device, it wouldn’t be a Mikrotik.

The fact that you want to run Multi-WAN rules out a UniFi Dream Machine. Which is a pity as Unifi has the best Wireless options in terms of coverage, speed and expandability.

Untangle and pfSense are good options if you’re happy building your own hardware platform. Untangle is really easy to use but if you want all the threat management features (AntiVirus, Wireguard) then it’s £100 per year-ish depending on the pound/dollar exchange rate.

I’m not a fan of expensive consumer routers. They’re generally very ordinary devices tarted up to look like some outlandish sci-fo device. And they certainly don’t justify the price premium. Most £300 ASUS and Netgear ‘spider’ routers are usually thoroughly beaten by a £60 Huawei AX3, which is a good device and the downside is it’s made by an unfashionable manufacturer.

For what you’re describing, I’d probably be looking at the QNAP QHora-301W. It’s a very high specification device, with good coverage on the wireless, it can do software defined networking if remote control is interesting for you.
 
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WJA96 said:
What do you consider isn't as good?
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Tbh, I think after years of using PfSense I just found Untangle too different. I thought it was quite clunky when trying to do anything fancy like multiple VPN routing, WAN failovers etc. I had a real issue with the lack of Aliases in Untangle, and whenever anybody mentioned this in the forums the devs would act like we were all retards, lol. The last straw was the simple question I asked on the forums that went unanswered for weeks (still hasn't been answered). When I'm paying over £100/year I expect a certain level of basic support. Never had any issues getting answers on the Netgate forums and I guess PfSense is just more what I'm used to.

Going back was like slipping on a old pair of comfortable slippers :P
 
neodude said:
Tbh, I think after years of using PfSense I just found Untangle too different. I thought it was quite clunky when trying to do anything fancy like multiple VPN routing, WAN failovers etc. I had a real issue with the lack of Aliases in Untangle, and whenever anybody mentioned this in the forums the devs would act like we were all retards, lol. The last straw was the simple question I asked on the forums that went unanswered for weeks (still hasn't been answered). When I'm paying over £100/year I expect a certain level of basic support. Never had any issues getting answers on the Netgate forums and I guess PfSense is just more what I'm used to.

Going back was like slipping on a old pair of comfortable slippers :p
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Did you actually ask Support for help? You get some some official support as part of the annual subscription.
 
stephpull said:
It is difficult for me to recommend any router, because even with a good router, the Internet will be very slow. And this is a huge problem. For it was we Americans who invented the Internet, and now we suffer from its slow speed.
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Lol, you sure about that?
 
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