Honestly this is too hard for me!

Hi,

you mean delete the sophos XG software? Why not just buy a cheaper modem/router and be done with it? So, you don’t perceive any security issues with your home network dropping to a simple firewall?
ian

I already have 2 simple home wireless routers that I put away when I started with this SF. But I am quiet keen to repurpose the SG115Rev2 hardware hence my question. 

Installing a 3rd party software on the sophos hardware will require you to learn a new product, configure it and do software updates to the included firmware packages just like XG. You can and if you go down that path I suggest you change the hard drive.

ian

Good idea on the hdd, thanks

I think an SG is two generations old? (I.e. XG and now XGS.) In which case, moving on in another direction makes sense.

At least in the XG/XGS world, if you wait until the firmware is available on the XG/XGS -- which involves a weeks-long rollout process after the new firmware is announced, during which time it's getting wider and wider testing -- I don't think you'd have issues. And, unlike home routers, if you do have an issue you can fallback to the saved previous version. So I don't think it's too dangerous to continue with Sophos, though the SG itself might be an issue. (Or is the SG for UTM? I get confused about that.)

But it's your network. I imagine repurposing the SG might be about as tricky as troubleshooting a firmware update gone wrong... you really are doing something non-standard and troubleshooting the issues that may arise. Also, Sophos runs on Linux, so the appliance is sized for Linux, not Windows or something else.

Sophos firewalls are basically a PC, so any firewall software that will run on a PC should work on the Sophos (although they don't support UEFI). That said, you won't find software that will run on a PC that is easier to configure than your current Sophos software.

If you do go for a 'basic' router, make sure you get a decent brand with a good reputation for updates because keeping them free of security issues by regularly updating ithe firmware s extremely important. I probably wouldn't use any ISP supplied router.

There are so many basic home routers within a price range that I simply get a headache doing research. I do have an ancient Technicolor unit that I use only as a modem that automatically configures to works with any ISP, an ancient Linksys EA6700 router and a not-so-old TP-Link VR500V modem/router. I think I will just made do with these now until I have capacity to do more research on which router I should buy. 

This is so frusfrating - my ignorance knows no bounds. I thought the TP-Link Archer C2300 would suit my basic requirements until I tried to reserve 50 IP addresses. It can only reserve 32 IPs. Never occurred to me to check until I reached the reservation limit. I looked around and could not find any home routers that can reserve above 32 IP addresses. I think that is very limiting since IOTs are so common now.

After using Sophos even in a very simple way I could not go back to using home routers. I tried using 2 different routers (not top shelf) and they fail miserably for same and simple tasks. So I redeployed the SG115.