Routers for the Small Office

I've been looking at getting a new NAT router for my home internet connection. I've been looking around at all the standard fare but I didn't see anything that would really make things better.

Features I want are...

1. VPN built in. so I can connect from outside safely and have no VNC or SSH ports left wide open.


2. A Real Hardware Firewall with Stateful Packet Inspection.


3. Some method of Intrusion Detection. I may still set up a Snort box, but at least I should have a log of attempts to reach my private network.


4. Traffic Shaping or some kind of Quality of Service (QoS) system that will give higher priority to email, chat, VoiP and browsing than BitTorrent, eMule or <Insert Bandwidth Hog Here> to stop those long delays and failed connections if someones downloading something huge (Like Knoppix DVDs or Debian DVDs).

I was quite surprised that the first three required features are fairly common now on NAT routers in the medium price range (£50-£100) but the Traffic Shaping option is difficult to spot. I thought I would have to save my pennies and get a Cisco router to do it, but eventually I found a few that do seem to do all of these and not cost thousands. D-Link DFL-200 and DFL-700, and3com 3CR860-95 among others.

However the one I have found most interesting is one from a company I have barely heard of. Draytek and it's their Vigor2900 I'm interested in. I will probably order one soon and blog about it later.

Technorati Tags: Router, Firewall, VPN, Traffic Shaping, QoS, Bandwidth Shaping