In a choice of a piece of iron for the gateway?

Question

Iron

There was a need to buy a piece of iron to use as an Internet gateway for approximately 500 company users.
Gateway requirements:
1. Stability.
2. Ease of setup (web interface, ssh)
3. Ability to connect 2 or more Internet channels via Ethernet.
4. Ability to configure automatic channel switching
5. Load balancing between channels.
6. Ability to authorize PPPoE with an Internet provider.
7. Ports 100/1000 mbit/s
This piece of hardware is planned to be used for a direct gateway to the Internet through which VPN, Voip, Proxy servers will be connected.
In fact, you need a rather dumb piece of hardware that will distribute the Internet regardless of whether the connection on one of the channels has dropped or not.
Actually the question is: "%username%, can you advise something?"

Answer 1

I would like to share the final solution of the above problem.
Tp-Link TL-R480T + - Cheap and cheerful. Performs all assigned tasks. Uptimes for several months. For more than a year and a half of use, there were only two cases of complete freezing, which made it impossible to reboot remotely.
Recommend!

Answer 2

MikroTik has a lot of hardware for your requirements.

Answer 3

need a pretty dumb piece of iron

Ability to configure automatic channel switching
Load balancing between channels.

A bit of a contradiction, IMHO, but oh well.
I want to ask - what is the budget for this hardware and what is the topology of the gateway infrastructure? This would be a little orientated to advisers in the councils ...
I personally would recommend well-known, proven solutions that have support from the manufacturer, or rather a contract with SLA.
Cisco makes quite productive and scalable hardware. Support in Russia, not surprisingly, corresponds to the contract, unlike many other brands.
Support for a wide range of technologies within the ISR is very convenient. With the right approach to configuration, the 2811 can withstand the routing of 96 C-networks of networks and NAT of eight networks of the same class with a peak CPU load of up to 80%. No degradation in performance was observed. Hardware uptime for more than 5 years (excluding planned maintenance activities)
Of course, you can get by with assemblies of different * nix, but this is a bit not the solution that I would use in Enterprise even for 200-300 clients.
PS: My personal conviction is that any company, even the smallest one, should use in its work, if possible, the most advanced tools and technologies in order to ensure the high efficiency of infrastructures.
An enterprise is a business, and a business is an investment. And if a business is not ready to invest in its own needs, it is not the right business and it is not worth wasting time on it.
The acquisition of this type of piece of iron is not such a big investment. Well, a maximum of two monthly salaries of the administrator.

Answer 4

The Pfsense distribution kit, look, you can put it on almost any hardware. We have been using about 25 such gateways for more than a year, there were no problems.

Answer 5

Simpler:
Zyxel Keenetic Giga II
Or younger models of kinetics, if budgets are tight
More abruptly:
Zyxel ZYWall ​​- for serious business

Answer 6

if you point your finger at the sky - Juniper MX80
but they don’t get it on their own - it’s best through an integrator + at least an annual support

Answer 7

pfsence and normal middle-class hardware, and there are no problems. the only thing to notice is there are jambs with a large number of Wi-Fi cards. those. with 4 network and 1 wifi everything is ok. when it grew to 5 network and 3 wafers, a reboot record appeared in the crown every Sunday at 3 am. friends use pfsence with 8 lan, they say there are no problems. I think. that this is basically a problem with freebsd and firewood for new Wi-Fi cards.