Hi all, not sure it’s the right place to discuss this but…
We know people won’t come back in the office for a while and we have more and more VPN demands.
What we lack is a small 50 $ box capable of :
- connect to our network with at-home worker wired link or Wi-Fi (AP mode in the first time that can be use to easily connect to the worker one, like for my air conditionner controller)
- automatic VPN (pepVPN?)
- 802.1X to be sure everything connected to this small box is controlled by us (SIP phone, computer…)
- QOS for SIP
We could set it at the office in advance (or through inControl) and leave it to our workers with the SIP phone, light-weight client…
In other words a micro B20 with very few feature.
Sure it’s not doable in 1 week. But if peplink OS could work on a Raspberry Pi, it doesn’t look impossible to achieve it before the end of the Corona pandemic. By the way, another ecologic solution, would be just to provide an ISO OS image that could install on Rpi, or whatever to handle this (like NanoPi R1 https://www.friendlyarm.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=248).
Best regards,
Completely get why you’re asking for this but its just not commercially viable / feasible.
You’re basically asking for advanced enterprise features, but don’t want to pay for them.
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Well, that’s maybe true… for 50 $…
But peplink OS in version 7 is based on linux 2.6 as far as I know. I can achieve most of this on my own on a Rpi. Of course, not everything: not the lovely interface, not the Wi-Fi AP to client mode switch, and not the pepVPN traffic. But, it can be replace with L2TP.
Moreover, the price is not the trouble: B20 is 300 $, but B20 is doing really too much thing and is too big. Pepwave is also too big. I just mean I won’t understand to pay too much for something with quite less options than B20 or Pepwave. But I’m ready to pay more. My iMac is quite expensive compared to other computers, but it’s rather stable, easy to use and lasts more than 5-6 years…
The need is going to be huge. Open source distributions will appear to handle most of it (but not pepVPN that is proprietary). Maybe it’s already the case: it’s a long time I didn’t look at those distributions (List of router and firewall distributions - Wikipedia). What should be the selling price of such a tool is not my job. I believe peplink should answer this question better than me. It would also be a way for them to sell pepVPN licences.
My job is to provide the service using the solution I estimate the more balance between price, ability, size, disponilility… With or without peplink (even if until now I really like this brand).
Best regards,