Does Synology Make an OS that's BETTER than DSM?

[@WunderTechTutorials]

Few things I wish I was a little clearer on: If you really want to learn networking and have a lot of flexibility, or just want a powerful overall setup, a pfSense/OPNsense/UniFi firewall will be a better fit. SRMs benefit is it's just extremely user friendly. If you enable isolation on the VLAN, it will ONLY work for outbound connections. Inbound connections will function as expected, so make sure you limit traffic with firewall rules if you'd like no communication both ways. No, SRM is not "better" than DSM, but if you're using an ISP router, you'd be amazed at what you can do with it. Thanks for watching!

[@nosurname9652]

Pfsense is free software, can be used on any appropriate device (like mini PC, virtual machine etc), Unifi is hardware with is own software inside (quite nice and feature rich, but also expensive). Can't say for Opnsence since never used it before.

[@DavidM2002]

I have two Synology routers and love SRM; so much better than any router that I have ever owned. I especially love the ability to create profiles and filters. And you're right; I'd never go back to another router. Thanks as always Frank.

[@WunderTechTutorials]

Glad to hear you're happy with SRM! Thanks for watching!

[@captainwin6333]

I've found Fritzbox have the best OS for their routers out of all the main players. Netgear and the like are back in the stoneage in comparison.

[@TechMeOut5]

SRM is awesome and we can only wish that every manufacturer would have a user interface so refined, so polished, so convenient...and really Synology have taken this and made it into art. If i was to choose a router off the shelf...it would be a Synology one for sure

[@WunderTechTutorials]

Thanks for watching, Avi! Totally agree, SRM is super user friendly.

[@miammissophiapetrillo]

THANK YOU for addressing SRM. There is SOOOO MUCH content made about DSM (and it's useful, of course) but nobody is producing deeper content about SRM that home-user-amateurs like me can use to broaden our skills and operations. Please do more (much more!) on SRM and don't shy away from the nitty-gritty stuff.

[@CedroCron]

Great video Frank... I was really interested in trying this but didn't think it would do what I wanted it to do. Your video helped answer my questions. Cheers! And yes, more SRM content please!

[@joeyhornyak8349]

Have a RT6600 in the country and an RT2600 in the city, each conntected to an MR2200 for a mesh network. Synology NAS at each location. Easily setup a point to point VPN tunnel and wirks great and secure. The best part of the Synology router is you get regular updates. Not like D-Link, Linksys or some of the other consumer brands where you get 1 update when you power it on for the first time. Tired of hearing security experts saying to update your firmware to counter the latest security issue. End of life for a router should not start after you bought it.

[@RogierYou]

I have setup more than 50 Synology routers and manage them remotely when needed (if ever). These have proven to be rock solid secure routers for small businesses and households.

[@aliasname5518]

The vlans are nice, but to make it complete you need a switch and set the vlans on each port - are you doing a video on this too?

[@WunderTechTutorials]

If there's interest on that type of thing, definitely! Using it with an unmanaged switch is relatively straight-forward, especially on this device, but with a managed switch it gets a little more involved...but even then, not super difficult.

[@jwpepper2835]

​@@WunderTechTutorials​​​​ ​​There is interest. I have a couple IoT wired devices going through a TP-Link managed switch (Pi-hole on a Raspberry Pi & a Phillips Hue light hub) that I'd like to isolate from accessing the NAS.

[@solsats]

More SRM 🙏

[@nelsoncastro7344]

Please more SRM content . Thank you

[@timotheeboucher]

On the Smart WAN part, I wanted to note that you can plug a phone with a USB cable and the router can use that cellular connection. (at least it did with my iPhone at the time) Quite convenient if your ISP is down since you can switch to essentially a hotspot mode without reconfiguring anything on the clients. (and works for Ethernet clients) As others have mentioned the profiles are great. You can assign devices to each profile and have filters, schedule, and time spent rules that apply to the whole profile. E.g., a child with a computer and a tablet will get the same rules everywhere.

[@WunderTechTutorials]

Great input! Thanks for sharing!

[@KameraShy]

Very intriguing. If I was in the market for a new router I would definitely consider this one.

[@PolarRed]

I agree, really like SRM, especially coming from DSM, but I just wish the 6600ax came with more than just the one 2.5Gb port, then it truly would be great. I'm actually thinking of getting a UDM, as I've had to put in a switch (a unifi pro max) because of that limitation. Synology yet again letting down their excellent software with under powered hardware! Synology never changes!

[@coolcat23]

It would have been good to learn which "20%" one will be missing out on. Right now, I don't know if SRM is ever going to be a limiting factor for me.

[@WunderTechTutorials]

The 20% is a lot...at least a lot more than I can cover in a video like this, but maybe a dedicated video in the future. Overall, pfSense/OPNsense/UniFi are EXTREMELY powerful firewalls and have a LOT of features/functionalities that SRM doesn't have. However, most home users won't really use most of them, and if you will, you're probably not going to be considering SRM in the first place. This is just a happy medium for someone interested in segregating their network and doing some basic, but more powerful networking than a traditional router will allow for, without having to go through the massive learning curve for those other options. To be a little clearer, SRM has 20% of the features/functionalities of those options. The "get you 80% of the way there" was simply to show you can have a fully-featured, segregated network in a package that's a lot easier to use/configure than pfSense/OPNsense/UniFi, but in no way did I mean to imply it has 80% of the features. Just that it gets you 80% of the way for what I believe most home users actually do with their router/firewall.

[@tonyvalenti6614]

Another great video Frank! This was one of the main reasons I dumped my Orbi mesh and moved to Synology, followed by large number of simultaneous connected devices and of course Synology’s great OS’s. That said I have setup my network with a Primary network wired and wireless compute network, IoT wired and wireless network, and a Guest network with Firewall Rules. I think this capability should be advertised more. I have a QNAP 10GbE switch, but only has wired VLAN of course. I have three RT6600ax Routers in my mesh, one router, one wired WiFi Point and another wireless WiFi Point. Love my setup.

[@PolarRed]

curious as to how you're running the QNAP switch. I tried one but couldn't get it to pass multiple VLANs through to the 6600ax on the 2.5Gb port, so I ended up returning it and getting a Unifi 24 pro max (which was cheaper than the QNAP, and Level 3 to boot!)

[@tonyvalenti6614]

@@PolarRed Thanks, I’ve had the QNAP for 4 years. It’s got 4 x 10GbE and 8 x 1GbE. Would is great and has no problem working with my Synology network. 😊

[@WunderTechTutorials]

Thank you and love the setup!

[@meloserj]

Hi @WunderTechTutorials, 2 things missed from SRM. First is VLAN on Primary network which I don't understand why synology didn't implement. Second is LAG on ports, for my case I need to use two 1Gb ports and LAG them to my switch, but unfortunately its not possible although in DSM its possible!

[@tycham85]

I like the idea of this! I enjoy home automation and have mostly gotten Zwave/Zigbee items, but recently got a couple where WiFi was the only option. I’d like to isolate those, but how would they then communicate with my Home Assistant server? I would like the server on the “main” network so we could access it via our phones/tablets.

[@WunderTechTutorials]

You have two options - you can either keep HA on the IoT network and allow your LAN network to access HA on the IoT network (so you can use your phones, etc), or you can keep HA on the LAN network and open it up to the IoT devices, but this will be slightly harder from a configuration standpoint as a lot of the auto-discovery stuff won't work. You'll have to add the IPs manually in HA, but it should all work.

[@dannydemiddelaer4020]

I have no internet connection on my new created IoT network, connected my phone to it the test this please help.

[@meloserj]

Please enable firewall rule for your network to access internet. Its not by default in SRM

[@Nextrix]

SRM is great, the hardware that ties to it is another story and a very limiting factor if you want to upgrade your home network greater than 1 GbE with IDS/IPS about half that speed. I had no choice but to move away from Synology because of this fact and haven't looked back. If you are good with these speeds they are totally worth the money for a base router/gateway.

[@RogierYou]

You could have added a faster switch. If your have an isp with more than 1GB you can assign port 1 as a 2.5 GB WAN port.

[@simon.9620]

I would love to try SRM, but I have Verizon Fios at home. I have to use Verizon router to make it easy.... is there any way for me to use in this situation?

[@WunderTechTutorials]

I had Fios a long time ago when I lived somewhere else and the short answer is yes you can, IF you don't have their phone/TV service. If you do, I think you have to use their router. There may be ways around it but I remember having to call and have them switch something and then I was able to use my own router. With this all said, I'm sure things could have changed since then.

[@simon.9620]

@@WunderTechTutorials Thank you for your quick reply! I only have their Internet service and tried other routers before after seeing some tips in reddit, but didn't work. Not sure I had the right methods though. Can you share what the way you used for Internet service only? Maybe I can try again... Thanks~

[@regwatson2017]

I already have this in my TPLink Router. All IOT on their own network.

[@TRDTYukiTV]

do Synology routers have VOIP settings like a netcomm or asus?

[@nemesis851_]

Does the static Reserved IP address table get limited to 25 or ???

[@WunderTechTutorials]

Good question - this is on a test network for me so I don't have enough to confirm or deny, but I'll check later if anything is in SRM.

[@markbee790]

Excellent thanks so much for doing this one

[@aliasname5518]

Hey, mind doing a video about passkeys on bitwarden?

[@jwpepper2835]

Will this affect anything if Pihole is running on the NAS and is the DHCP server?

[@WunderTechTutorials]

In what sense? On the router, you'd have the DHCP server disabled if Pi-hole is doing it.

[@JamesJosephFinn]

Great video. Do any of their diskstations have routing capability? Also, what are your thoughts on using something like pihole to prevent DSM / SRM from "phoning home" telemetry? Thanks in advance.

[@WunderTechTutorials]

They do not unfortunately. You'll have to buy a router for that. As for Pi-hole, I haven't looked at it from that perspective unfortunately.

[@JamesJosephFinn]

​@@WunderTechTutorials Thanks for the reply. A follow up question: Is sending telemetry data not a privacy concern in your eyes? I'm just learning Synology, and one concern I've seen is that they're sending all sorts of usage metrics back to home base (unless I'm mistaken). I don't have a dog in the fight; I'm just honestly interested in the arguments for and against why this is, or is not, a problem to be concerned with. Thanks again.

[@WunderTechTutorials]

I've never really looked at that in the context of privacy, but mainly because privacy is an absolute rabbit hole. You start off wanting to have a certain level of privacy, and end up realizing you have no privacy and have to start taking fairly extreme measures to regain at least SOME of your privacy. I think privacy is important, but unless you're willing to use email aliases, possibly phone aliases, encrypted email providers, potentially VPNs, and about a million other things, you're going to lose your privacy somewhere along the chain. But that's just my opinion and you should look at it in the context of your own scenario to do what's best for you, as I am in no way a privacy expert and know just about the bare minimum, so again, just an opinion.

[@JamesJosephFinn]

@@WunderTechTutorials thank you for taking the time for the articulate reply. Agreed, 100% privacy is a futile pursuit; but we should all be taking measures to limit what tracking we can; the "low hanging fruit". Installing something like pihole on your network router should be step one for all freedom loving peoples, IMO. Synology doesn't need to know how I'm using their device; and then sharing that data to whomever pays, or demands, to see it. I take every opportunity I can to insert blind spots in my data profile, as should all freedom loving peoples. Peace. Love the channel.

[@3000agape]

Does anyone use Synology SRM VPNPlus Remote Desktop? Is it like Microsoft Windows Remote Desktop?

[@meloserj]

@@3000agape I have it on my router and can access any network that I give permission on firewall remotely. Works without any issue. Just remember to change the default login screen if you have public IP. Some hackers are looking to identify which system they are penetrating. I placed windows login background and laugh on newbie hackers. lol

[@berwickcomputers]

Adding Home Assistant to the Setup can make it auto discover difficult

[@WunderTechTutorials]

Agreed, but you can technically keep HA on the IoT VLAN and open up the LAN to access HA if you want auto-discover to work well. With that said, some may not want HA on the IoT VLAN.

[@jwpepper2835]

I am about to add Home Assistant using another WunderTech tutorial. There will be problems if I install HA?

[@demorez5]

i was hoping this will be a tutorial of how to install it onto regular hardware

[@WunderTechTutorials]

I'm not even sure if that's possible to be honest. At least not officially.

[@EduardoSantanaSeverino]

Same here. I started watching the video as if this SRM is a competitor for PFSense because in the video, you started comparing it to PFSense, which can be installed on any regular hardware.

[@WunderTechTutorials]

I tried to make clear in the beginning of the video that it runs on Synology Routers, but sorry for the confusion. SRM is not a competitor to pfSense. If you're using pfSense, you most likely won't be happy with SRM. However, to a blind home user who has never used pfSense/OPNsense/UniFi Firewall's and is stuck with their ISP or "regular" router, SRM is a great entry from an ease-of-use perspective. That's where it ends though, as you can do way more on any of those than you can on SRM.

[@HiltonT69]

I kinda like DSM, but it has packages that are so, so, so, so, so, so, so old...

[@bratling]

Once I tried Docker I never looked back. Container Manager isn’t perfect but it’s got the basic tools needed.

[@Nextrix]

@@bratling Even their docker packer is behind on updates. Not the best for all those containers running in it for security. I went for a custom MiniPC so I can manage the docker installation myself, and run in rootless which DSM does not support.