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Router recommendations - VPN and Url filters

We have an Asus RT-N66U. It has a lovely interface and does most things very well.

However it has two issues. One is that it needs restarting about once a week to recover speed. This seems to be a known bug.

The other is that I need to be able to filter out access to certain URLs, notably mesu.apple.com in order to stop Apple devices downloading updates. I also need to be able to set up a VPN in the router so everything outbound routes via that.

This router can't do that - although it has the necessary settings, they don't work together. Trying to set up URL filtering with the VPN client enabled just breaks internet access altogether.

Actually I wonder if any router can do the above - possibly not. Do I need two layers of routers, so:

Internal Network > Router 1 (URL filtering) > Router 2 (VPN Client) > Modem

.. or is there a router that can do this?
 
I had the same issue with the Sky Q Hub, it needed to be restarted every few days or it would bog everything down for no obvious reason. Since replaced with a TP Link Archer VR200 and more than happy with its performance.

You can setup the router to work with an IPSec VPN and or IPv6 Tunnel, but sadly I don't think it will filter out specific URLs (although you could perhaps identify the IP addresses for that URL and block it via a firewall).

However I do recall that DrayTek kit had some kind of content filtering system for URLs.
 
That router looks good.

I take back what I said about the Asus one.

You can have the firewall and the VPN running at the same time and it does work.

But you have to turn it off and on again after each change to the rules.

Probably has something to do with the order of precedence in the routing and what it processes in what order when responding to requests. A reset re-establishes everything.

OK, that's Apple's update servers blocked. Now for Microsoft's Cortana spying ones..
 
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"you have to turn it off and on again"

Classic solution :) .
 
Are you running the latest firmware for that Asus, I was under the impression the slowdown issue had been fixed (memory leak issue).
 
Good call, there is a firmware update - I shall install.

Actually, I thought that I had this working, but not quite.

With the VPN enabled, the URL and IP block list gets bypassed.

I think this is going to need two routers - an internal one that handles the URL and IP block lists, and an outer one which handles the VPN.
 
Could you do it with something like the OpenDNS service.
 
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A bit late to the party but I think a pfSense router will be able to do all you want + tons more. It is a steep learning curve and can be quite expensive. I use a PC Engines board for mine and it works like a charm. No reboots necessary.

C.
 
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