sub $500-750 CPE firewall for voip-centric application

Thu May 5 17:53:48 UTC 2016

Looking around at different SMB firewalls to standardize on so we can start
training up our level 2/3 techs instead of dealing with a mess of different vendors
at cust premises.

I've run into a few firewalls that were not sip or 323 friendly however, wondering
what your experiences are. Need something cheap enough (certainly <$1k, <$500-750 better)
that we are comfortable telling endpoints to toss current gear/buy additional gear.

Basic firewalling of course is covered, but also need port range forwarding
(not available until later ASA versions for eg was an issue), QoS (port/flow
based as well as possibly actually talking some real QoS protocols) and VPN
capabilities (not sure if many do without #seats licensing schemes which get
irritating to clients).

We'd like a bit of diagnostic capability (say tcpdump or the like, via shell
preferred) - I realize a PFsense unit would be great, but might not have
enough brand name recognition to make the master client happy plopping down as
a CPE at end client sites. (I know, "there's only one brand, Cisco." ASA5506x is a
bit $$ and licensing acrobatics get irritating for end customers.)

/kc
-- 
Ken Chase - Guelph Canada