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

Pretty good first impression together with PFSense! Yes, it gets warm even when it's idle, but there is a simple solution for that: "AC Infinity MULTIFAN S1, Quiet 80mm USB Fan, UL-Certified for Receiver DVR PlayStation Xbox Computer Cabinet Cooling". This fan is pretty quiet, the size is a perfect match and it can run at 3 different speeds. In my case the lowest speed is enough to keep this device only at 2-3 degrees above room temperature. If it gets warmer I will simply switch the fan to its second speed and it will still be silent. The PFSense load and configuration took some time, but it 100% worth it. To my surprise the speed became noticeably faster since the entire parasite traffic was blocked. I asked Grok to generate me a step by step manual keeping in mind my router brand and model and it made it. There were some difficulties, but not too critical and easily resolvable. What nice is - I dropped an old 15" monitor and a keyboard together with this PC, UPS, cable modem, router, switch to where they are almost invisible, at the very top of the furniture where I can check it every time if I need to. The web interface is powerful and works pretty well on both my laptop and even my cell phone.

I instantly fell in love with this thing when I got it and still love it. Works beautifully with pfsense. Supporting blazing fast speeds in my home network plus VPN and content blocking for ads trackers and malware for everyone connected to the WiFi which I’m running out of a separate WAP attached to the OPT1 port. I love the start up and shut down tunes it plays out of the beeper which let me know when the network is back on, it’s not simply a power up jingle, it actually waits until pfsense has finished booting up to play it. I also love how sturdy and heavy it is. Note: this kind of firewall running pfsense is very warm constantly, it needs to be able to dissipate the heat so don’t just cram it in a tight space just because you can, it might overheat.

I was seeking some good hardware to leversage pfsense - woweeee did I find it!You will love this unit. Runs so well - FAST too. I like the interactive beeps it does during certain points of boot / shutdown (maybe silly to some of you! but it helps me! :)I am using to front end my home FIOS network. Removed the Verizon router - put this between my ONT and our ASUS Mesh.I am not a UNIX admin or Network SME, but downloading pfsense with VGA support to my USB key (wrote image with Rufus) was the most complex part of set up - seriously, I am 100% confident my 7th grader niece could do this set up. It is amazingly straight forward. All I can say is both Proteckli and Pfsense are sincerely amazing teams. This solution is a killer deal for ~$300.Also - one of my more “firewall savvy” friends had me install pfBlockerng - totally totally awesome! THANK YOU PROTECTLI AND PFSENSE FOR BEING AWESOME!

I'm 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.In the picture, you will see the Protectli vault FW4B on an open-wire shelf in my IT closet.I found NetworkChuck's YouTube video entitled "your home router SUCKS!! (use pfSense instead)" to be a good introduction that covers about 25% of this firewall's capabilities. I also found Lawrence Systems' YouTube video "2020 Getting started with pfsense 2.4 Tutorial: Network Setup, VLANs, Features & Packages" to be useful material.I hope this firewall appliance serves you well.

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.Install was super easy, booting to a USB key with the ISO image loaded was seamless and presented no issues. Untangle recognized all 4 NICs and numbered them correctly (eth0-eth3) with WAN and LAN as eth0 and eth1, as expected.Using the Intel i210 NICs is huge for Untangle performance, which is why I bought this specific model. My previous firewall was using RealTek NICs based on the 8168 chipset, and while I generally didn't have problems with streaming and overall performance, the NICs were a definite bottleneck during the day when I'm also constantly VPN'd in to work and I'm certain after research were capping my max throughput.After I got everything configured, my CPU and RAM usage are both way lower (CPU went from 4% avg to < 1%, RAM from 65% to 23% utilized), and more importantly my throughput has jumped to ~825Mbps in some parts of the wired network, and ~700Mbps on wireless. Huge improvement and I'm able to realize the value of my improved ISP connection.Nice little overall system.