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

I have bought many of these for Pfsense firewall projects in the past. These firewalls do not disappoint. These a great and drive packets home to their destinations quickly and efficiently. I recommend this over any closed source firewall or any consumer grade junk out there. Great base for a wired LAN and wLAN project!! I will continue to buy these for any future project that comes up!

Its more expensive than other hand warmers on the market but it works reliably! Plug-and-warm. I think it even has others features I dont use.

Easy install and operation with OPNSense. Reasonably fast operation with hardware for the money, too slow in my tests to run squid proxy with filtering if speed/heavy usage required but I don’t really need that. It is very reasonably warm in operation but I added an external usb quiet free standing fan to move low speed air across it and case stays cool to touch. Very satisfied, and recommended. Been running a month now, absolutely no issues.

I purchased the Protectli unit to replace an obsolete Cisco ASA5505, where Im running Pfsense on the Protectli. Im totally happy with the Vault where the performance exceeds the old 5505. Pfsense is certainly less hassle to deal with compared to the Cisco interface...

This is my third unit that has now failed. There is an issue with some function with the motherboard that fails prematurely. The latest has a QC mark indicating a manufacture date of late 2018. I have had dozens of computers and none have had this high a failure rate in such a short period of time. If you need fanless SFF then these work well when they run but be prepared for it to die within a few years.

I bought this for use as a firewall because it has four built in network ports, and is smaller than my network switch. Even though it is running a slow processor, it still has more horsepower than I need for running pfsense. The box does get warm to the touch, running in the low 40s C for a temperature. The thing I like best is that it just keeps running. Pfsense works extremely well with this hardware.

i purchased this to run pf sense firewall

Awesome little guy. Running Untangle flawlessly. Did have to shut down some dpi to get full bandwidth, but that’s me being stingy with my gigabit link.

i purchased this to run pf sense firewall

I was very excited to buy this box. When I finally got it and plugged it in ready to load up the software it wouldnt boot. I didnt get any kind of post. After much troubleshooting I came to the conclusion that the RAM was bad. I had ordered the model with the 8 GB of RAM. Luckily I had a 4 gig stick and an old laptop. Once I replaced it I was able to boot in and load software. After trying different firewall operating systems and not getting my gigabit speeds, I decided to load up OpenWRT. The flow offloading and open WRT enabled me to get my gigabit speeds. Now that everything is up and running Im much happier. I would have given more stars but this thing should have been quality checked before it was sent to me. Someone should have noticed that it wasnt booting.