I've been following device evolution for years, ever since the 1st TIVO and low end routers and cable boxes started using it. And when the high end router advertising protocols and gbit bandwidth showed up on the Linux devices, I knew they owned the market. I'm surprised when they are NOT linux based.

Which has nothing to do with installing a general purpose do anything operating system, and then deciding the exact pieces to install, and then configuring each of the pieces to work together, and then creating a failover box since if I'm not around it can not be recreated by anyone else (at least anyone else available).

And keep in mind when this box goes down, the entire company will stop working. This is not an isolated "use occasionally" system, this is the cornerstone of how people deal with the outside world.

Note: That recipe is the same for any dedicated 3rd party box over a self install, and it usually makes sense for smaller companies who do not have multiple techs to draw from. You don't even need to know what it is doing to know that a supported black box solution where the cost of development and support is spread across many devices is usually the cheaper solution, and almost always the SAFER solution than any home brew, no matter how much better the home brew solution is.

Note: This equation goes away the second you have 2 full time techs working for the company. 2 techs can be leveraged many times over what a single tech can do, no matter how good the single one is, because they can get past the single person dependency issues.

Of course, it means accepting the limitations of the box. What I usually do is get a black box, use it until I hit the limitation, and then recreate the expandable Linux or BSD equivalent and start using that as a backup or extra. But I want a supported box to start off with, and I want it for a fall-back if I hit a problem with my home brew solution.

Ok?