Pre-Sales Help: Which unit to buy / Features->Purpose

RouterOS Beginner Basics
1

Hey guys… I’m totally new to RouterBOARDS but have been using Soekris with m0n0wall for a long while now. I’m wondering what board would be best for my application…

I am putting 3 servers at a datacenter and would like to use this as a firewall primarily. VPN might also be used, but probably only by myself for admin purposes. The servers will be on a 1Mb connection (not very fast) and the hosted site on these servers is for internal purposes, so the whole world wont be hitting these servers. I see the RB/750 is on sale right now… will that allow me to setup a firewall with routerBoard?

I’m also interested traffic shaping if thats an option, but its a total after thought as I’ve got a CISCO 2950 that I use to limit the connects right now. The other routerBoard I’m considering is the RB/450G… I have no use for wifi, i am just looking for port based features.

thanks in advance.

2

Either board would do you fine, It really depends how much you want to future proof it i.e. if you want to start doing higher throughput or a lot of tunnels. I quite like the RB450 for routers at the bottom of my towers.

Mike

3

Thanks for the info. This 1 router will be for 3 servers (1 file server & 1 SQL server…that wont see any internet traffic, and a web server) So I’m thinking that unit will work fine for this small application. But I’ll get an RB450 as well for me and my other clients.

So am I right to understand that I can limit bandwidth per port or per IP or just all traffic? I’ll research how later, I just want to make sure I can do it. I wish i had known about this before, as I would have not purchased this 24 port cisco switch that does limiting per port.. its overkill and for me a pretty penny.

Also, I assume I can do passthrough IP so i’m not limited to NAT right? all these servers need public IP’s (my other clients, not current project)

thanks in advance guys… I think i just found a sweet replacement for my expensive Soekris projects.

edit
Didnt realize but the RB750 is not out yet… so I ordered an RB450 for my client and an RB450G for myself… going to sell my soekris on ebay. :slight_smile: I hope RouterOS is as powerful as m0n0wall. (I have a feeling its more powerful though)

4

I’m a big fan of the RB450G and the RB450 is fine too. You are correct on the RB750… not out yet and unknown performance.

What I really like about the RB450G is:

  1. Gigabit ethernet ports
  2. 256MB RAM
  3. 512MB flash
  4. 680MHz processor
  5. microSD slot

and of course RouterOS which you get on all RouterBoards.

I think you will be pretty happy with the RB450.

Have fun,

Tom