Way back, almost 4 years ago, I wrote the initial post on my home network. I was using Sophos UTM to protect my network. It was a free product for home use, so it wouldn’t let you customize it with your own logo and things like that. Its only functional limitation was that it would only allow 50 IP addresses behind it. For most people this isn’t a problem, but I’m a geek so I like to play with new things, and we have a ton of IP connected gadgets in our home. When I ran an automated OpenStack deployment test, I went over my threshold.
I began researching possible alternatives to Sophos UTM and found that Sophos had just released an XG platform, again with a free home-use version. This one didn’t have IP limitations. So I began playing with it. It took me a little bit to get a handle on how things fit together, but overall I am actually seeing a performance improvement over UTM. Administration is relatively simple once you understand how everything fits together.
I also wrote about my ownCloud server. It was running flawlessly behind my UTM firewall, so I figured it would be simple enough to move it behind my XG firewall. Sure enough, I configured the web server in XG and created a rule to forward traffic. Viola! Everything is working as it should.
This site is now running on my home network behind my XG firewall, and so far its performance has been great. I’m hoping to be able to take some time moving forward to add content to this site and talk about servers, networking, and who knows what all else..so stay tuned!