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

I replaced an older SFF with an Atom processor, 4GB of RAM and a HDD with this unit after upgrading my Internet connection from cable to 1 Gbps fibre. I was hitting a CPU and NIC choke-point, and only getting ~400Mbps at any point on my network.

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.

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

performance good for home router

I purchased the device to install PFsense on it for my home network. My expectations were low on the installation and setup however I was way off. I simply stuck the PFsense USB in and powered on the little guy and it took right off and PFsense was installed in less than 5 minutes, no issues. The GUI was super slow and unresponsive right after the install but after an hour or so it caught up and hasnt been slow since. I really like this device for what I have going on and I would recommend it. The one concern about it would be how hot it runs. its running in the 120 degrees (F) range but other than that, Im really impressed! Im even thinking about getting another one to create a solid VPN tunnel.

Liked the size

I started using Protectli Vaults in 2019 when I finally made the switch from Tomato routing to Untangle for residential routing. You can get a better price and even pick up the Vault at Protectlis offices in San Diego area. Very impressive business. I now have 5 J3160 units installed using Untangle (sorry, cant comment on Sophos or other UTM installs), and they are running with never an issue. The vaults are extremely well built, and you get much more processor/memory/SSD for your money than with UTs products (about 50% of the cost). Itd recommend at least a 120Gb mSATA and always use 8GB of RAM. Protectli is working on a Vault with SPF, so Im excited to get that when it comes out. Very pleased.

Computer comes with BIOS not patched for latest vulnerabilities, would not use it in home network, any network.

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.

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.