[Discuss] Opinions/Advice on router boxes w/ port forwarding

[Tom Metro]

jc at trillian.mit.edu wrote:
> ...it occured to me that it might be a good excuse to get some
> experience  with at  least one of the connercial boxes that do the
> job "out of the box".

Take a look at a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite or Pro:
http://www.ubnt.com/edgemax

It's priced like a consumer router, but supposedly has the performance
and capabilities of a commercial router. I've read good things about them:

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwan/lanwan-reviews/32012-first-look-ubiquiti-edgerouter-lite
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwan/lanwan-reviews/32398-ubiquiti-edgemax-edgerouter-pro-reviewed

http://www.amazon.com/Edgemax-Ethernet-Ports-Gigabit-Router/dp/B00CB2LMWA
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA1EA0R09483

and plan to try one. They run EdgeOS, which is forked from Vyatta, which
is a Debian fork. Theoretically this has a vendor backing the software
and providing security updates (presumably passing on and validating the
upstream Debian security updates). I've yet to read reports of how well
they pull this off. (They appear to have released new firmware versions
about once every 3 months, starting in the Fall of 2012 when the product
was introduced. Have there also been intermediary security updates?) To
me, this should be a top consideration for any edge router.

The software has a GUI, though reviewers say it is rather limited, and
many things still need to be done via the command line. It supports a
command line that is modeled after some of the commercial routers:
http://wiki.ubnt.com/VRRP_-_CLI_Commands
http://community.brocade.com/dtscp75322/attachments/dtscp75322/Certification/30/3/Vyatta-BasicSystem_6.6R1_v01.pdf

So you might pick up some commercial router familiarity from that.

Unlike a consumer router, the EdgeRouter doesn't do much out of the box,
and requires you spend some time figuring out how to configure it.

These are in a similar hardware class to the Routerboard Dan mentioned,
but supposedly have some custom packet routing acceleration hardware to
achieve 1 million packets/second performance. Plus, they run a
derivative of a mainstream OS. Last I looked Routerboards ran a
proprietary OS.

Also, the EdgeRouter is strictly an 802.3 Ethernet device. No wireless
radios.

 -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
The Perl Shop, Newton, MA, USA
"Predictable On-demand Perl Consulting."
http://www.theperlshop.com/