Protectli Vault FW4B - 4 Port, Firewall Micro Appliance/Mini PC - Intel Quad Core, AES-NI, 8GB RAM, 120GB mSATA SSD

Pros

Really wanted this product to work. Got the first one and kept getting CAM Errors for the hard drive. Replaced the hard drive still the same error. Returned this the first time and received the second one. Now Im operating with all new hardware and Im still getting the same error. Put in known good hardware and the box crashes. Now it just beeps at me, reset BIOS buy jumping pins according to instructions, nothing just more beeping. Terrible product and would not purchase again.

The box could have done with a convective heat transfer element since it feels a little hot for cloistered storage. The OPNsense initial configuration has some default assumptions but there is always the folks in Tech Support if you are not the type to read the manual online.

Maybe a little pricey but seems to work great!

I’ve installed pfsense and opnsense both. After installation when i change lan ip to 192.168.0.1 it stops working. But default configuration works fine. Also it gets hot you can’t even touch.

Im using the Protectli Vault FW4B 8GB RAM, 120GB mSATA SSD as a firewall appliance for my extensive home network. It has enough horsepower to handle several people in the household watching video, a total of 35 clients on my gigabit network, a VoIP phone system, an at-home business and inbound and outbound VPN service. I bought model with the larger RAM and SSD drive for plenty of buffering and network storage space. The PFSense community edition software is free and easy to download and write into the firewall appliance. Using a keyboard and display, the basic bring-up is easy. Once the basic firewall is active, the more advanced features of the PFSense firewall sofware can be overwhelming at first for an intermediate IT professional. I use the firewall software to VPN through my Internet provider as well as offering remote access VPN sever to my network and file share. In my setup, the firewall appliance sits between my cable modem and a managed switch and my WiFi router (which has been re-configured to be an access point). The firewall appliance serves as a router with DHCP complete with VLANs for segregating traffic. The Protectli FW4B will definitely work for a large household and a small business.

I got this directly from the vendor with OpnSense installed. Its a nice little machine. Much better that your standard router/wifi combo. I have my old wtr in ap mode now. Protectli has good customer support should you have an issue.

Started out with 1 vault, planned to have 2 vaults for managing 2 locations. The first one came with bad RAM and bad CPU.

Perfect for pfsense.

This Protectli Vault FW4B replaced my ISP’s Router/Modem/WiFi Combo: