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

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.

Been running PF sense a year+ with no issues. The device looks very professional and has adequate specs for a good PF Sense firewall.

*** Recommendation for international purchasers - if you want this unit, dont purchase the mSATA as its an unknown brand (PHISON) - rather purchase a trusted brand from a local vendor with warranty. We suspect the mSATA failed. The memory supplied has Samsung modules, these are known to be reliable. ***

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.

Had a Ubiquiti USG-3 prior to getting this device. My USG would run at 100% CPU and ping response time would get up north of 1500MS when running a VPN tunnel through the firewall. I installed PfSense on The Vault and ran the same tests. This firewall runs at 6% CPU MAX when running the same tests. So far I am very pleased with the performance. Will update as I turn more features on.

performance good for home router

Bought to replace functions previously assigned to a dinky DSL modem. This box runs pfsense and handles DHCP, NAT, and PPPoE authentication with the ISL. Works great and we had a big improvement in reduction of dropped packets and internet hangups. CPU temperature doesnt get above 60ºC even in a warm server room.

Perfect for pfsense.

Apparently, the device is finicky about the display output. If the intended use is as a Desktop PC or if you dont have a few HDMI monitor types to try consider something else.

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.