M0n0wall alternative

[badass]

Hi everyone,
I'm looking for peoples experiences on firewall appliances like M0n0wall - just not that.
I don't fancy having a similar experience that I did with storage where they all had various flaws that I had to spend hours finding out about.
Alternatively, if anyone else has had M0n0wall running as a VM and experienced ridiculously bad performance (~1-2 Mbit download/upload speeds an 30 Mbit link, whether running as a VM on a microserver or as a VM on an i5 3570k and with any amount of RAM) in an out of the box configuration and managed to solve it then the fix would be appreciated.
I'm asking these specific questions as the whole point of me choosing M0n0wall was the lack of fiddling and ease of use. Troubleshooting=fiddling and I have better uses for my time than fixing crap software. I spend all day at work doing that.

[wasabi]

Have had good experience with Smoothwall express. Not the flashiest most featured firewall in the world but used it in a production environment and was very stable.

[TheAnimus]

Hmm, do you want one that is known to run well in a VM?

I rate m0n0wall highly, but I was using mini-itx boards which, at the time, I think half the contirbutors were using!

[Moby-Dick]

Have you tried untangle?

[kopite]

I`ve been using vyatta on esxi install i`m messing about with.

All Command Line although i think there may be a gui plugin out there..

[badass]

Have had good experience with Smoothwall express. Not the flashiest most featured firewall in the world but used it in a production environment and was very stable.

I'll look into that.

Hmm, do you want one that is known to run well in a VM?

I rate m0n0wall highly, but I was using mini-itx boards which, at the time, I think half the contirbutors were using!

Yeah specifically it must run well enough as a VM in a microserver.

Have you tried untangle?

Not yet but it looks too expensive for my home network. A quick look at their site doesn't show a free/cheapo version.

I`ve been using vyatta on esxi install i`m messing about with.

All Command Line although i think there may be a gui plugin out there..

The command lineiness puts me off for now. If smoothwall doesn't deliver I might do some digging.

One thing I forgot is what I use M0n0wall for.
It runs as a VM on an HP Microserver, just PAT+NAT's my home network internet traffic, NAT's access to my home network from the internet (currently just 2 rules) and terminates an IPSEC tunnel with a Draytek 2820 at the other end.

Anyway thanks everyone for your help

[mycarsavw]

I've been using Smoothwall Express for 5+ years - couldn't be happier.

After the initial setup, there's nothing that needs to be done (as long as you don't add enhancement mods!) other than the odd update check.

[Moby-Dick]

Not yet but it looks too expensive for my home network. A quick look at their site doesn't show a free/cheapo version.

http://www.untangle.com/store/lite-package.html

[badass]

http://www.untangle.com/store/lite-package.html

Awesome cheers

[badass]

A quick update:
Smoothwall has exactly the same problem. Both on VMware workstation and on ESXi 5.1 on a Microserver.
The only thing I can think of is that the host was upgraded to 5.1 a while back and that I haven't realised the reason my downloads all seemed to be around 1 MBit was actually my firewall or the server hosting it.
I can't be sure but I think that when I originally used smoothwall its performance was fine when the Microserver was running ESXi 5.0
That Vmware workstation 8 exhibits the same performance problems leads me to believe it's some new Vmware feature/bug causing this.
Time to go tickbox/config file hunting 8-)

[badass]

Swapped out the Netgear switch with another one. Full performance restored.
Thanks everyone for your help. However after the fiancee downloaded some malware I'm inclined to look at untangle to further protect the network.

Thanks everyone for your help.

P.S. M0n0wall goes back into my list of great "because it works and is simple" software library.

Netgear remain in exactly the same position in my view.