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

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.

My Protectli Vault FW4B has its mSata screws locktight/glued from the factory. This makes zero sense considering you have to install your own storage. The screws used are very low quality and strip immediately. Buyer be warned.

This does what it does well and keeps on doing it with no issues. I was able to download documentation and installation was pretty easy.

Really easy to install pfSense and then configure it. Prior to this I was using the router from the ISP, after switching to a dedicated Router and Switch, bandwidth tests indicated about a 10% increase in D/L speeds. More importantly I have a much finer control over the network services performed by the router, namely DNS and DHCP.

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.

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.

The Protectli Vault FW4B is an excellent firewall micro appliance/mini PC that provides robust security and performance for your network. With its Intel Quad Core processor and AES-NI encryption, this micro appliance delivers exceptional performance and security for even the most demanding applications.

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.

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.

This thing is super high quality. Great heat sink on top. Would highly recommend