Hello there!
Sorry in advance for the long post, but this has all been building up fkr a few weeks! After a few of weeks of research on pfsense, opnsense, flexiwan, sophos, VyOS, etc., I've decided to build my own appliance and use Untangle. At the end of the day, I want something that works well, is low stress and has a great community behind it.
I was originally going to install a firewall with load balancing, but what I really need is SD-WAN like application path selection or whatever the different vendors call it. It appears that Untangle SD-WAN can be installed free for personal use using esxi. After that, it gets fuzzy.
1. Can only version 1.2 be used this way, i.e. free?
2. Can the path quality selection/application based routing be used in a single site configuration for general internet bound traffic?
3. Can it be service chained with NG Home Probalso running as a vm or is there another way? I've seen mentions of adding the SD-WAN router to NG but that appears to be the Enterprise version. If worse came to worst, I could use the sd firewall for basic rules and put my home iot devices behind a bitdefender box, but I'd rather not.
I am working from home but am a power user of connection quality sensitive applications and also contend with 3 teenagers on digital learning (zoom, videos, etc.) and of course, everything else they're doing at the same time. It's even worse when there is a study group or gaming party. I have a 1g/1g connection but quality is all over the place even when I bypass the gateway. My employer is going to pay for a second 1g from a different ISP, but wants me to dedicate it to me as a solution and switch networks as needed. Problem with that is that both are broadband and quality will vary. So, I'd like to be able to leverage technology to my benefit. I do have experience with networking, security and SD-WAN, but only with closed source vendors and for Enterprise deployments. As all of you probably know, SD-WAN can mean a lot of things and is deployed many different ways. Some platforms have single site benefits and some do not for various reasons.
Just in case, my hardware is i7-4790, 8GB ram, 500G HDD, two authentic Intel i350-4 nics(1 fujitsu, 1 Cisco). Overkill, but I got it super cheap.
Even if some of it is at a charge, I am good with that. Just didn't want to fork out 800 bucks a year for a full on license. I know all this seems like overkill, but I am in a position to leverage it via some employer funding and I really need a hobby. Its been a while since I got to play with the gear.
Thanks in advance!
Marcus