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

i purchased this to run pf sense firewall

Installation of OPNsense was a breeze, although the installer defaulted the WAN/LAN ports reversed, an easy fix and documented on the protectli website (not really needed, as it is easy to figure out). I added the RAM and disk listed below, and so far it seems fast and stable (although I have only had it a short time).

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.

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.

Purchased the no memory or HD model. Except for USPS punching holes into the outer box, the inner box was intact and well packaged. The device is solid and after removing 4 screws, the bottom plate can be lifted off. Inside, well organized and easy to drop in memory and msata card. Theres a SATA plug but clearly no room. However, you could skip the bottom plate and have the sata drive outside. When ordering, the pictures show a power brick. I was expecting a brick with 3 prong plug but got a universal wall plug which doesnt fit on my UPS. @protectli - did the one i receive get mispackaged?

Ive taken this and installed Sophos UTM 9.6 on it and I expect it will be my firewall (no matter the OS or version) for a very long time (I got it with 8GB ram and 32GB msata)! I bought it to replace a virtual Sophos as well as actual Sophos firewall appliance. This thing is tiny, very standard Intel hardware, silent and works great! Would definitely recommend!

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.

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.

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

Runs pfSense like a champ. Thats all.