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,

So far this little firewall has rocked. I was running pfsense as a VM, but decided to move it out to a dedicated piece of hardware and this fit the bill nicely. Running the latest pfsense software which was very easy to install via USB stick. I did end up buying a USB fan to help keep this cool, its air cooled so a fan just helps out.

I was a bit nervous about this unit after reading other reviews but have this up and running and it runs quick and actually really cool (CPU temp 80 degrees). Barely warm to the touch. I have it running pfSense and it is able to keep up with my 1G connection quite well while even having a OpenVPN connection continuously open (all traffic not going through it obviously).

Four 1Gbe NICs, passive cooling, with respectable performance from a US-based system integrator with a good reputation and the option for CoreBoot? Whats not to like? I set mine up as an over-specd pfSense firewall to replace some rather underwhelming Asus gear. Combined with some Unifi APs and managed switching gear, it adds up to a pretty powerful home networking setup!

I use this unit with Untangle home version and it is rock solid. I have yet to see the CPU get over 40% load even with UTM enabled, email scanning, and ad blocking. Untangle setup took about 20 minutes from a bootable USB stick. All the ports were correctly detected during installation. It was super easy to create several vlans and it has no problem keeping up with many streaming devices going at once. The unit is completely silent and small.

Fantastic appliance, great price and performance.

This Protectli Vault FW4B replaced my ISP’s Router/Modem/WiFi Combo:

Been running this little guy for over two years without issue. It runs warm but rarely consumes more than 15% cpu. pFSense has been updated three or more times and its been trouble-free. I host a public facing website and this device protects my network for all sorts of intrusions.

This is a great piece of hardware for running the OPNsense or pfSense firewalls. I installed the latest version of both operating systems on it without any issues. Its been running without any hiccups for several months now.

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