Turris Omnia vs Peplink Surf SOHO

General discussion
1

Hi, I currently use the Peplink Surf SOHO but this has limitations for my use.
For example:

  • Firewall throughput is limited to 120Mbps
  • it can only broadcast 3 SSIDs

However I really like the Peplink Surf SOHOs ability when it comes to it’s ease of use especially in the following areas:

  • Easy to create multiple VLANs / SSIDs
  • Easy to isolate those VLANs / SSIDs e.g. can tag a physical port on the router as being totally untrusted and connect said untrusted devices via network cable. Can also tag an SSID with that same VLAN and use that with totally untrusted devices such as IoT devices / guest devices.
  • Can have my own devices on a seperate trusted subnet/SSID/port that is isolated from the untrusted subnet/SSID/port.
  • Easy to setup internet filtering as it’s built-in

I would love to replace my Surf SOHO with a Turris Omnia if it can match and exceed the Surf SOHO in the areas I’ve mentioned above. Can someone please let me know if it can do these things?

2

I think that you can archieve anything by appropriate edit of those configuration files :

/etc/config/firewall
/etc/config/network
/etc/config/wireless
/et/config/dhcp

You can do a lot of this configuration by LuCI web interface, but you have to know first what you want to archieve. Some editing of those files may be necessary. I would recommend to study documentation here for OpenVPN and TOR even it is not exactly what you want you could learn how to modify those files. So yes Turris will fit your needs but little bit of study and manual configuration will be necessary.

3

Thanks Twinkie, to be honest I was hoping to not have to mess around with config files, I do enough of that at work with IOS…

For home use, I prefer the simplicity of a GUI to achieve what I’m after, which the Peplink does admirably! Within 1-hour of turning it on for the first time, I’d nailed multple VLANs and SSIDs, plus got filtering in place. I value my time at home much more plus it’s easy for my partner to modify if need be.

The cost is similar so I was hoping for ease of use in the areas highlighted as a priority…

4

As @Twinkie wrote, all you need can be done in Luci (advanced web interface from OpenWRT).

Adding multiple SSIDs is easy. Same as multiple VLANs.

What you would use is firewall zones.

In this case you really have to know what you are doing to do it right. You can use tagged vlans for ethernet and different (secure) ssid for wifi. But it can be done easy enough if you know something about networking (as it seems to me you do).

It depends on what you want to filter and on what level you want to filter it. Some people here on forum are doing some dns filtering. And we have promised on campaign on indiegogo that there will be parental control and we are working on it. There are some first glimpses of it in Turris OS 3.7 (just technical demo) but there is more to come.

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5

Well most things can be done in LuCI but I read that especially in networking part LuCI can render config files unusable. And definitely not offer all the parameters for Atheros WIFI card in LuCI so better to edit config files directly. On the other hand you could archieve anything you want and I doubt any other webinterface give you all the options anyway.

6

Prior to Peplink I used Smoothwall, IPfire and pfSense. Modifying files in IPfire was (as I seem to recall) painful as when an update was released, you had to remember to change the config files again. I would hate to get back to a world of having things break after installing updates as I really can’t be bothered to tinker when I get home. Definately no disrespect to anyone here but I’ve aged and have many more repsonsibilities at home now than I used to have - simply no time to tinker anymore! Or the desire if I’m honest… :slight_smile:

  • The auto update firmware feature sounds really good! Less for me to do…

  • Does the Luci interface need to be installed seperately?

  • Is there a live demo site with the Turris OS or Luci interface please? Whilst I’ve heard of OpenWRT/Luci, I’ve never actually used it.

  • So if you create multiple SSIDs, are they automatically isolated in their own VLAN or have I misunderstood?

Thanks again for all the assistance!

7

Most of it is installed on router in default. The rest can be pulled using updater software trough packages.

No there is no live demo. You can get screenshots all around the internet, but as far as i know no live demo.

You have to associate it with some firewall zone, so you have to create new zone for it. But changing zones and associating them with interfaces is basic part of network configuration in luci.

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