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

My work relies on pFsense (firewall/router) and I had a SG-2440 (2 core Atom C2358) go belly up after five (5) years, it wasnt the netgate products fault, e.g. Intels Atom C2000 processor family has a fault that effectively bricks devices, costing the company a significant amount of money to correct e.g. Errata note AVR.54, titled System May Experience Inability to Boot or May Cease Operation,

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.

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.

Works like a charm

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.

The appliance was very easy to get up and running with pfsense. Took me less than 10 minutes to install and setup a basic configuration. It was running fine for a couple of days and then pfsense started logging kernel cores. The system would restart itself and work without issue for a day or 2. That is until it continually started coring when attempting to load the wan interface.

Bought the 4 port without SSD and Ram to run pfsense. 100% uptime. The hardware is well built and the board itself. I recommend it to friends and whoever is looking to upgrade their 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. ***

8 days uptime as of writing - no unplanned reboots and plenty powerful enough for my home network. Solid metal case of which the heatsink is part of, which is an interesting design. Runs warm to the touch (29C) but not hot. I had no trouble getting pfsense 2.4.4 running - I imported my config from the router this replaced. Very nice.