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

It is hard to imagine this device pushing packets higher than 1Gbps because the web UI of PFsense is slow on this hardware despite being solid state storage. So far it works ok but for the price of over $300, I expect a hell of a lot better performance. On the positive side it is absolutely quiet and doesn’t generate much heat. I love the 4 NICs in such a small footprint. This was the best priced device I could run PFsense on which was completely solid state. For that I am thankful but it would be nice to do this for at or under $200 or with a lot better performance. I will try to upgrade RAM later and see if this aids the web UI response times.

Using it for PFSense on an 80Mbps DLS connection, works fine. The Manufatures website has full specs and some good FAQs on what to performance to expect with PFSense for each model.

Im pretty disappointed. I upgraded to this device because my old PfSense box did not have AES-NI CPUs.

So far the system has been running without any issues except that the cooling sink get hot fairly quick to the touch. The normal temperature in the house does not seem enough to cool it an ambient temp without a forcing air through the fins.. I had to add a cooling fan on top of the sink to keep it cool to the touch. Another point to make to take in consideration is the price. I would get it for under $300 if I would go directly to Protectli instead.

I found this while looking for a replacement for an old first-generation FitPC device that I used to use as a network firewall. The FitPC still runs, but for the last few years, Ive needed something with gigabit ethernet ports, which it doesnt have.

I have bought many of these for Pfsense firewall projects in the past. These firewalls do not disappoint. These a great and drive packets home to their destinations quickly and efficiently. I recommend this over any closed source firewall or any consumer grade junk out there. Great base for a wired LAN and wLAN project!! I will continue to buy these for any future project that comes up!

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.

Came with a loose screw inside and wouldnt post, acknowledge drives, or indicate any functionality past power being applied whatsoever. Great paperweight, awful electronic. You could do better with literally anything else.

This is a nice little firewall box, I have Ubuntu Server 18.04 running on mine, acting as a firewall/router for my home network. For this purpose it works great.

I was very excited to buy this box. When I finally got it and plugged it in ready to load up the software it wouldnt boot. I didnt get any kind of post. After much troubleshooting I came to the conclusion that the RAM was bad. I had ordered the model with the 8 GB of RAM. Luckily I had a 4 gig stick and an old laptop. Once I replaced it I was able to boot in and load software. After trying different firewall operating systems and not getting my gigabit speeds, I decided to load up OpenWRT. The flow offloading and open WRT enabled me to get my gigabit speeds. Now that everything is up and running Im much happier. I would have given more stars but this thing should have been quality checked before it was sent to me. Someone should have noticed that it wasnt booting.