I just recently got 1 gigabit up/down at home when they put in fiber. Now I’m looking for a router/firewall to use. I run a homelab with a few VMs.
I was looking at getting a Cisco router to tinker with, as I’ve just finished a course on IOS. What routers would you recommend (2nd hand) for less than 150€? Is Cisco even feasible at this price point or should I just get a mini pc and run pfsense/opnsense?
I’ve looked at the ISR900 and it seems to meet my requirements, but I am not sure if it also offers a web interface, which would be quite useful for me.
Bit of an unstructured post but I hope you’ll be able to help me regardless.
EDIT: I ended up getting a mikrotik hAP ac3 router. It seems to meet my requirements and after trying the routerOS demo they have up I decided that it would work for me.
Mikrotik or Ubiquiti all the way! Don’t touch Cisco.
I’ve had some bad experienced with Ubiquitis edge routers and their Unifi software, so I’d rather avoid them for a bit. I’ll have to look into mikrotik!
Personally they lost all credibility when they started to push for the Cloud Key. It’s just plain abuse to make hardware that is unable to self-setup properly and run autonomously. I get the whys but still plain abuse.
Cisco and web UI are a nope all cisco enterprise exams are based on the cli with the exception of DNAC.
The ISR900 series has a max throughput of 250Mb so it will not work for your case.
Go for the opnsense on a mini pc. It will be more capable than a cisco router
If you are keen on continuing down the cisco line get GNS3 or EVE-ng setup and learn the cli with the iosv and iosv_l2 images.
Though so, thanks.
I’m comfortable with a cli, but in a homelab environment quick testing might prove easier using a GUI, so I’ll probably go with the pfsense route then
opnsense