NethSecurity vs TNSR

NethSecurity is an OpenWrt-based unified threat management solution for small and medium-sized businesses. It combines firewall, multi-WAN, content filtering, deep packet inspection, intrusion prevention, and VPN capabilities, including IPsec, OpenVPN, and WireGuard. Multi-WAN can balance connections, while traffic shaping applies minimum and maximum bandwidth settings. Threat Shield blocks known malicious IP addresses using named blocklists and confidence scores. NethSecurity is an open-source project and is currently available only for x86-64 systems; minimum requirements are 1 vCPU/core, 1 GB RAM, 1 GB disk, and two Ethernet cards. Its optional Controller runs on NethServer 8 and manages multiple installations remotely. Without a subscription, it can register up to three community firewalls; with a valid subscription, there is no unit limit, but only subscribed firewalls can be registered. Nightly automatic cloud backup is subscription-only. A 30-day trial activates the Business plan, but commercial support cannot be requested during the trial. Professional support response time is one business day during specified Italian business hours, excluding Italian holidays.

TNSR is a software router and VPN concentrator for high-speed routing and VPN workloads. Netgate says its Vector Packet Processing can scale from 1 to 1000 Gbps and beyond on commercial off-the-shelf hardware. Routing options include BGP, OSPF, static and dynamic routing, policy-based routing, carrier-grade NAT, and equal-cost multipath. For VPNs, it supports routed site-to-site IPsec and WireGuard, with IKEv1 and IKEv2. Administrators can manage TNSR through a CLI, RESTCONF API, or NETCONF. Monitoring options include SNMP and a Prometheus exporter for dataplane statistics. Security features listed include access control lists, packet filtering, password or key authentication, RADIUS, and role-based access control. Netgate offers cloud deployments through AWS and Azure marketplaces, as well as its 6100, 8200, and 8300 appliance systems. Subscriptions include 24x7 TAC support. TNSR has firewall capabilities, but Netgate does not position it as a firewall and warns it may lack features customers expect from pfSense Plus.