Which Router for small business

Caporegime
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All networking vendors are garbage in their own unique ways, you just need to find one that isn't terrible in the areas that are important to you. Threads like this will always have people putting forward their preferred choice and then somebody will follow up minutes later telling you about their terrible experiences.
 
Associate
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We switched from Draytek as our 'go-to' to Watchguards - never looked back. So much more reliable, great support and advance hardware replacement. £400 is nothing for a business your size for something so critical.
 
Associate
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I wouldn't recommend such a cheap model.

At least go with the Vigor 3900... it's an OK cheap router.

Otherwise Mikrotik.

Or Meraki MX64.

Or Juniper SRX320.

All those options are a vaguely similar price... I'd go for the Meraki for ease of use or Juniper for performance... Draytek and Mikrotik are acceptable, but pale in comparison... anything else is junk at that price point.

I would not recommend any Juniper devices from a costly support perspective. Whilst the device itself is adequate, you must get a support contract if you want firmware updates, even day one out of the box... This cost might be fine and budgetted, but if you are considering a Draytek i doubt it. In whch case take two Drayteks, keep one as a warm standby.
 
Associate
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We switched from Draytek as our 'go-to' to Watchguards - never looked back. So much more reliable, great support and advance hardware replacement. £400 is nothing for a business your size for something so critical.

We have a lot of Watchguards and generally they are rock solid. Although our most expensive £15,000 model randomly locks up every few weeks which is a real pain and watchguard support can't find anything wrong. In the end we had to buy an IP power switch, so we can remotely switch it off and back on if it freezes.
 
Soldato
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We have a lot of Watchguards and generally they are rock solid. Although our most expensive £15,000 model randomly locks up every few weeks which is a real pain and watchguard support can't find anything wrong. In the end we had to buy an IP power switch, so we can remotely switch it off and back on if it freezes.

Why did you not get Watchguard to replace it outright?
 
Man of Honour
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I would not recommend any Juniper devices from a costly support perspective. Whilst the device itself is adequate, you must get a support contract if you want firmware updates, even day one out of the box... This cost might be fine and budgetted, but if you are considering a Draytek i doubt it. In whch case take two Drayteks, keep one as a warm standby.

That is generally how every serious vendor works though - the trade-off is you get issues fixed promptly and up to date firmware for the life of the product. Ongoing software dev isn't free...it's also, as pointed out, really very cheap for a low end SRX...
 
Soldato
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Mikrotik would fit the bill but if you’ve not configured one before you’d be best getting a consultant to get you up and running with one. If it’s an internet dependant business and you are going to rely on it then don’t skimp on the router and getting it deployed correctly.

RB2011, RB3011, RB1100AH4 even at top end a CCR1009.

Model number is fairly irrelevant as they will all happily route massively more than 30Mb and the OS is the same across the board.
 
Caporegime
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If you're comfortable with configuring 'port forwarding' on a home router then you can work a DrayTek - that's the appeal of them. They then add a bunch of features that are useful to the target market - VPNs, remote management, bandwidth limiters, outbound firewalls, multiple subnets, and a support team that exists.

They're not an ASA, FortiGate, SRX whatever replacement, they don't try to be, and they cost a ton less. As long as you're capable of keeping the firmware up-to-date and you understand how to use the firewall then you should be good.
 
Soldato
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All networking vendors are garbage in their own unique ways, you just need to find one that isn't terrible in the areas that are important to you. Threads like this will always have people putting forward their preferred choice and then somebody will follow up minutes later telling you about their terrible experiences.

Pretty much this!

Sonicwalls are pretty good imo, they have there nuances but you don't have to be a network engineer to figure them out.
You also cant go wrong with a draytec but the interface suggesting a reboot on the slightest change is infuriating! I also find there firewall interface completely unintuitive. But they do constantly develop there firmware and you don't need a support agreement inplace to get the latest and greatest, they really are good at set and forget.

Meraki are stupidly easy to manage but you pay for it!
 
Associate
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I wouldn't recommend such a cheap model.

At least go with the Vigor 3900... it's an OK cheap router.

Otherwise Mikrotik.

Or Meraki MX64.

Or Juniper SRX320.

All those options are a vaguely similar price... I'd go for the Meraki for ease of use or Juniper for performance... Draytek and Mikrotik are acceptable, but pale in comparison... anything else is junk at that price point.
100% agree!
 
Soldato
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We have Juniper SRX240's as our branch office borders. Thats more because we had them spare than because they are appropriate for such a small business.

I saw some references to Fortigates. We're very pleased with them where we use them. Usually as Service Firewalls.

I've got some experience of CheckPoint and Cisco devices. Ultimately they are good products, but look at your requirements as I think all of the above are overkill for you.

If i was you I'd be looking at something really straightforward like the Ubiquity Unifi USG boxes. You probably don't even need a Pro to be honest for such a small user base and network link.
 
Caporegime
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Fortinet are a bit of a mess at the moment, they can't seem to decide how certain configurations should be built and have made a bunch of changes in 5.4 and then changed it all up again in 5.6, and seem happy for the documentation to lag behind by several months.

If you're getting a Fortigate box then I'd get one that can still run 5.2, or give it another year or so for more development on 5.6 to sort itself out. In either case, make sure you're good with the CLI.
 
Associate
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Fortinet are a bit of a mess at the moment, they can't seem to decide how certain configurations should be built and have made a bunch of changes in 5.4 and then changed it all up again in 5.6, and seem happy for the documentation to lag behind by several months.

If you're getting a Fortigate box then I'd get one that can still run 5.2, or give it another year or so for more development on 5.6 to sort itself out. In either case, make sure you're good with the CLI.

I just spend the last few hours test deploying a 60E (after upgrading to 5.6.3) and I had to touch the CLI for:
  1. Renaming the AD Root cert to something less stupid.
  2. Working around a wildcard bug
  3. Bit of traffic analysis as it turns out I forgot to PVID an interface.
Documentation is pretty good. Policy building is much faster in 5.6. Combined with the massive throughput increase provided in the E range I'm loving 5.6.3.

So far the 60E is smashing those awful Check Point 1400s.
 
Associate
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Honestly I wouldn't buy Draytek. I made that mistake. Some of them have really confusing user interfaces and the support is non-existant. They used to be good, but they aren't any more. Now I would always rate support higher than anything else.
 
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