Cisco Routers vs. pfSense

Sometimes our Cisco Routers aren't well suited; it's just in really small environments. To put just an at-home module, that's really the only time I can't really see it being used. Even in any situation, like a small office, like five to 10 people, even just putting a small router out there has its inherent benefits outside of just using a normal internet connection, like getting your local Comcast. So, as I said, it's very adaptive.

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I believe PFSense is well suited for both home lab environments as well as up to small to mid-size business environments on a tight budget. However, I would implore that anything in production requires the use of the authorized hardware that PFSense sells to receive support. However, in my experience, PFSense is a solid set-and-forget firewall solution.

• Helps to separate routing information for different networks for different customers.
• Helps peers with service providers and Customer Networks and starts the exchange of information between them.
• Helps facilitate internet connectivity for enterprise networks.
• Helps transferring Internet or Private Data from one place to another.

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• Easy to use. Good user interface design! Easy to understand and easy to set up.
• Lower hardware requirement. 3 years ago, we used an old PC to run it. Now, we have changed to a router device with Celeron CPU and 8GB RAM. It runs smoothly with a 1000G commercial broadband.

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• In some cases it would be helpful if the Cisco Routers in UC mode would support FXO ports when connected to the Webex cloud for calling.
• When used as WGBs if there were more telemetry options that collect roaming stats OOB would help during troubleshooting efforts.
• Would love it if there is a CLI command to show the API endpoint for a given show command.

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• I did kind of mention a Con in the Pro section with OpenVPN.
• When I create a config for an employee other employees are able to login to that config.
• I could be doing something wrong when I am making it - I am not afraid to admit that as I am pretty new to all of this, but it seems like it builds a key and I would think the key would be unique in some way to each employee, but I could be wrong.
• I actually do not have a lot of Con's for this software - I did not get to set this up on our work network so I am not sure of any downfalls when installing.
• I installed this on my personal machine in a Hyper-V environment to get a feel for it before I started working on it at work and it seemed pretty smooth. I didn't run into any issues.

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We are extremely likely to renew, as we have been very happy with our Cisco Routers for over 10 years. Their uptime as well as stable nature makes them ideal for us, as we are an industry that cannot afford downtime. We trust our partner to recommend our next model Cisco, when the time comes.

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The best thing about Cisco products is their presence in community. When you have a problem you can do quick search and find whoever else had the same question and expert answer for that question. Other thing is there are Cisco certified people we can find very easily if want some help with comissioning these products

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The pfSense UI is easy to navigate and pretty go look at. It is much better than some high dollar firewalls that just throw menus you you. The pfSense UI is quick and responsive and makes sense 99% of the time. Changes are committed quickly and the hardware rarely requires a reboot. It just runs.

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Cisco support is very good. Of course, sometime you will run into support guy that isn't up to the task. Buf overall, the support system is well structure. You know if this support isn't able to help, you can esclate the situation to find another help. Also, their documentation is well developed and can be very useful.

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pfSense+ basic provides "As Available" email support. pfSense+ Pro offers 24 hr turn around email support. pfSense+ Enterprise offers 24/7 phone support.

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Cisco Routers are the most reliable and stable internet edge routers ive used. They' have also always offered high performance for the most demanding traffic workloads. Lastly, from all of the various vendors I've used, Cisco routsrs have the best TAC support.

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Meraki has a unified management login for all devices, which is nice. It also has decent content filtering, both areas where pfSense is weaker. Where pfSense far ouclasses Meraki is in the ease of use and the other width of features. These include features such as better VPN interoperability, non-subscription based pricing, auditability, not relying on the infrastructure of a third party, more transparency of what's actually going on, easier to deploy replacements if hardware fails. Additionally, the NAT management for pfSense seems to be a bit better, as you can NAT between any network segment and not just the LAN segments out the WAN interfaces.

• Network management has become easy and fast with cloud based portal.
• Network policies could be rolled out quickly across the devices.
• Improvement in Network security.
• Stable internet connection has lead to less downtime and more productivity.
• Stable internet connection in each location within the organization.

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• pfSense can be installed on commodity hardware with no licensing fees. With a simple less than 10 minute restore time, on most hardware, it's an extremely inexpensive way to achieve the same results that some of the more expensive vendors provide.
• The easy to use interface has allowed configuration management to be preformed by lower level technicians with quick and easy training.

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