solid small business router?

[NoodleTech]

Hello I am looking for a wired router for my friend's coffee shop. This router will solely be used with a Pepwave Officepoint 400 to provide his customers with free wi-fi access. The router must be fast enough to handle a 50mbps down/50 mbps up WAN connection.

Some traffic control features such as port or application blocking would be nice. Not really sure what I need, but I do know that my friend has problems with people torrenting large files over his wi-fi network. A way to defer that would be nice.

what are your suggestions? thanks in advance!

 

[theevilsharpie]

It may be a bit out of your friend's budget, but a FortiGate 80C will handle a 50Mb/s connection, and has the capability to perform deep-packet inspection that can identify traffic like BitTorrent regardless of which ports it uses.

 

[NoodleTech]

haha thanks for the suggestion. you're right it's out of his budget. any cheaper alternatives?

 

[mxnerd]

Why not use free open source firewall like IPCop/Endian (a much improved version of IPCop) running on atom based mini-itx barebone PC with a secondary NIC. I'm sure it's powerful enough to handle 50Mb up/down and should be within your friend's budget.

As long as router or firewall's UPNP is turned off (IPCop/Endian does not UPNP), I guess users have no way to run BitTorrent.

 

[Geofram]

I'd suggest using Untangle (link http://www.untangle.com/
It would take care of the routing, as well as all of the security features you'd need. Internet filtering, antivirus, etc are all options in it.

Just build a decent PC to run it on and you'll be good to go; the software is free.

 

[Soccer4Don]

Lets change the whole concept and go to open-mesh! This is a free program that you can setup as a wifi hotspot. Buy the box there and then if you need additional antennas, it is all right there and the dashboard is very user friendly.
http://open-mesh.com/store/
Don

 

[drebo]

Asa5505

 

[mc866]

PfSense, Monowall or one of the other open source firewall options out there on a old spare PC or even better on a small low power Alix board?

 

[aE0n]

I would look in to a Netgear FVS338. Fast, up to 75Mbps, lifetime warranty, easy to configure, and relatively inexpensive (about $190).

 

[Emulex]

xincom
edimaxusa
hotbrick
(sold under many other names all the same chinese stuff) -> great dual -wan router