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

Apparently, the device is finicky about the display output. If the intended use is as a Desktop PC or if you dont have a few HDMI monitor types to try consider something else.

Got this to protect a 1U server in colo. 100Mbps symmetrical on the WAN and a few VLANs to route. CPU performance is OK for the wattage but cant touch a bigger box for VPN or IDS/IPS performance. Its perfect for what I need though.

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.

Pros

I didn’t have any problems running this box with opnsense. Everything worked out fine configuring as a firewall.

Bought to replace functions previously assigned to a dinky DSL modem. This box runs pfsense and handles DHCP, NAT, and PPPoE authentication with the ISL. Works great and we had a big improvement in reduction of dropped packets and internet hangups. CPU temperature doesnt get above 60ºC even in a warm server room.

This server works great for Pfsense.

Its a really good low in firewall if you want something simple I wanted to virtualize my firewall and run a ad blocker on it but it doesnt support virtualization. Which is fine it did the job it needed to very very well just not in the way that I would like to have had it handled.

A top-rated review says that this box can’t run VPNs faster than 100Mbps up, 100Mbps down. That’s not true; running OpenWrt, I got 700Mbit/sec iperf3 up/down using WireGuard®️ in a live test over Verizon FiOS to an quad core endpoint at packet.net. With a machine this fast, you will expose weaknesses in the other VPN endpoint, and in the network in the middle. You may also expose performance problems in your VPN implementation; OpenVPN can be quite slow.

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.