I think I was able to match the configuration for both software to my use case as best as I could. With all these running, I notice that the CPU temp sometimes reaches 80°C in pfSense and I get kernel warnings about critical temperature in the logs.
While with Untangle, the temp rarely reaches 55°C. It seems like pfSense is doing a lot more for the same purpose. Is this normal? Is it a FreeBSD issue? Is it the Unbound DNS resolver? Just my hardware? But everything seems to be far easier to setup in Untangle than in pfSense.
Why is it not more popular? What am I missing with pfSense or with Untangle? Most likely a combination of FreeBSD and your hardware. But on most standard x86 HW it should run fine. I would say they are pretty similiar when it comes to features, while Untangle has better webfiltering.
Have you enabled and experiment with PowerD in pfsense power savings, to fight high temperatures? You might be right. This makes me worry about network stability and long-term use related to higher than usual temperatures. Thanks, Paul. In fact, this is THE video that led me to Untangle.
Maybe I need to try out the other opions. Hard to say why it shows 80°C on your machine. You could also try to ask in the HW section of the Netgate forums…. Thanks for the replies so far. I really appreciate it.
But recently, our main ISP has been unstable. We added a backup ISP for failover last month. So I installed Untangle trial again. Web Filter blocked a lot of ads and private relay stuff from our Apple devices, but I could block those using pfBlockerNG as well.