pfsense w/ squid

[alluseridsrejected]

I have a small business client that is only 3 computers. It is a bull dozer company. They are in a rural area where the best bandwidth they can get is 3mb dsl. They also use Quickbooks Online. Of course they are complaining the computer they do quickbooks on is slow. I have told them 3mb is really not enough for the online Quickbooks, but they still want to use it anyway. The other day I asked them to call the phone company and ask for faster internet and to specifically ask if they can install ADSL2+ with a second DSL line. I told them this would still not be fast enough, but it should be better than now if the phone co. can do it.

So then a couple of days later they call me telling me the phone company is there installing a 2nd dsl line. Come to find out, they just hooked 2 computers to one dsl line/phone co. router and 1 computer to another dsl line/router. So now of course they are calling me asking why all the computers can not print to the network printer and that it is still slow.

I am thinking I will build them a computer with at least 3 wired nics and a wireless nic and recommend they get the paid untangle software which one of it's features is internet caching. But if they balk at the annual subscription and they probably will, I was thinking I could build a pfsense box and have is do load balancing of the 2 dsl lines along with squid caching.

Does this sound like a good plan? Should Squid help with their quickbooks online?

 

[alluseridsrejected]

Never mind, just heard back from the client. They want to do the paid untangle box. The $540 a year is not an issue.

 

[altrenda]

To answer your question anyway, I love pfSense, it's a great firewall and router.

But, while i prefer pfSense, and think it's easier to use and does a better job at most things, if UTM and edge protection are what you want, then Untangle, especially the subscription version, is way better than pfSense with Squid and all the other add ons.

I have not seen Squid make much of a difference with something like Quickbooks online.