I tried some other gateway before installing Untangle, but i stopped experimenting after i tested this wonderful product.
I have just a small inconvenience (that would be more relevant if Untangle will follow the route that i suggest in the second part of my post):
the network card that i intended to use as internal got the external role, and viceversa.
maybe i missed something, but i couldn't find a way, either during the initial config process, or from the http/https client, to reverse the use of the two ethernet cards i have.
The result is that my gigabit lan card is connected to the router and the other card (10/100) is connected to the internal network (all gigabit, including the switch, with a wi-fi "n" extension).
For the moment it makes no practical difference at all, given the Internet bandwidth currently available (7mbit ADSL at my home), but where i used to live there are already 20mbit fiber connection (as at my girlfriend's home), with real throughput reaching 13mbit.
More about it in the second part of my post.
Performance-wise, Untangle is doing its job very well, as i assembled a machine with a pile of scrap materials:
the mobo is equipped with a Pentium III 1000, and the chipset is a very so-and-so VIA, with 1GB sdram. The two lan cards are both cheap Realtek's, one a recent Gigabit and the other an old 10/100.
The motherboard came free, it was replaced time ago because of misuse (shorted USB ports), a problem that made any keyboard not available (PS/2 or USB).
I took out the metal casing of the two USB ports with a Dremel, and the board was alive again!
Even with heavy TCP and UDP port redirection this humble hardware keeps up with Untangle, allowing for better peer2peer performance than the previous router (a very good Zyxel).
I started with no applications at all, cause i was afraid of the little power of the hardware, but as i am adding more and more free applications (including Antivirus and VPN), i see no performance degradation, even with five clients connected!
Thumbs up for Untangle developers!
After incensing them, a small advice for the developers:
why don't allow for external applications, something like plugins?
There are various addons that could be very interesting, expecially if installed on recent hardware with enough RAM.
I searched Google for the availability of packages for Untangle, and the only thing i could find was a blog from a chap who's experimenting Untangle with Asterisk and Samba. The bad thing is that what's still missing are the Untangle packages!
I don't see why the Untangle team is not publishing a guideline for building extra packages for their software. Of course they could caution against using the extra packages on production applications, cause of possible security breaches. But there are many home (and also small office) users that would be happy to get something more from the Untangle machine.
Here are a couple of suggestions:
Basic NAS application, using Samba
FTP server (good for backup also)
BitTorrent client (maybe with separate HTTP control)
Another minor complaint: why don't give the choice to select the keyboard type?
Issuing complicate commands at the terminal with a non-USA keyboard is a real PITA...
These are just my humble opinions.
I work with computers but i'm no network guru, and i mostly forgot what i have learnt long time ago about Linux, but i'd love to get some feedback from forum users, to know if somebody else agrees with me..or thinks that i'm plain wrong!
have fun
CJ