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

Been running solid since I set it up as my router. Mounted on the wall with the heat sink slats vertical to give it some nice convection cooling.

This is an incredible little firewall appliance! While a bit cumbersome to configure with pfsense there are really good guides and documentation available. I would strongly recommend the pfsense guide by NetworkChuck on YouTube for initial configuration.

As long as you know what your trying to do it’s a good product

I bought this for use as a firewall because it has four built in network ports, and is smaller than my network switch. Even though it is running a slow processor, it still has more horsepower than I need for running pfsense. The box does get warm to the touch, running in the low 40s C for a temperature. The thing I like best is that it just keeps running. Pfsense works extremely well with this hardware.

I had trouble with my first device, and the company resolved the problem.

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.

It works, and it works great. Yes, a little pricey, but Ive had no issues with running pfSense on it. My old pfSense overheated and died on me (used hardware that lasted 5+ years), and I bought this to replace it.

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.

This is the fourth system I built. This did not last as long as any of the other ones. I submitted a service ticket on their web site. Lets see what the response will be.

Pros