Quwery about firewall software

[Doug]

On 11/15/2015 04:01 PM, Karl Auer wrote:
> On Sun, 2015-11-15 at 11:09 -0700, compdoc wrote:
/various snips to get to the point/
>>> don't use a general purpose computer to run a firewall.
>> and many times have vulnerabilities that expose you to the bad guys.
> The bad ones do. MikroTik are not bad ones. You are FAR, FAR, FAR more
> likely to make a mistake configuring a firewall (general purpose
> computer or otherwise) and leave yourself exposed, than fall victim to a
> product vulnerability. Provided of course that you keep the product up
> to date.
>
>> Installing DD-WRT helps but when the units dies, you have to toss the whole
>> thing and buy another.
> Yep. And one of them costs so little that you can do that. In fact, they
> are so cheap that you might as well buy two to start with. Bang the old
> config on the new device and you are off and running. Replacing any
> component of a general purpose computer is likely to cost as much as an
> entire MikroTik router, will take time to procure, will take time to
> install, and good luck predicting which bit will fail first.
>
> The MikroTiks are famous for their rich feature set. I don't know enough
> about pfSense to do a feature by feature comparison. If you need a
> particular feature that pfSense has and the MikroTik doesn't, then you
> should definitely get pfSense.
>
>
> With the MiktoTik you will not have component upgrade issues, you have
> no moving parts (except fans in the largest models), you have no
> operating system install or upgrade issues, and in general they cost a
> fraction of the money, time and effort than a general purpose PC.
>
> By the way, this is not just MikroTik. There are products that get you
> similar benefits and DD-WRT is one of them, though there is still a
> significant amount of tinkering involved.
>
>
I'm a home user with just enough network to run three computers and three printers,
and I know absolutely nothing about configuring a firewall. You praise
MicroTik highly, and I have looked briefly at the site, which has so many
choices it is somewhat confusing.  I am using a Western Digital 7-port + wireless
N900 router, which I believe has a firewall in it, but nothing I had to configure.

Is MikroTik better? How much better? If I got one, where would I find instructions
in plain English on setting it up?

Since I generally use Linux and very seldom boot into Windows, is there a
good reason to think about an upgraded firewall? I'm not using the systems
for business, but I would not like to find my system(s) held for ransom!

--doug