Reddit reviews Protectli Vault 4 Port, Firewall Micro Appliance/Mini PC - Intel Quad Core, 4GB RAM, 16GB mSATA SSD

I would suggest installing a software firewall on a small server/micro appliance [this is what I use!] (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01JHJGG5M/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1).
There you can configure your LAN, VPN, and many other services to keep your network safe. Your LAN would host your applications, accessible from outside over VPN.

I used one of these Protectli
Firewall Micro Appliance With 4x Gigabit Intel LAN Ports, 4GB RAM / 16GB mSATA for my OPNSense Box with Adblocking, IPS, Gigabit NAT, IPv6 (Harder then it looks!) Right now I'm trying to do VLANs between my IoT Crap / Rokus and my main network at the house.

If you can put up with crap interface of SonicWalls you will have no issues with a premade pfSense appliance. There are any number of them on Amazon (we've had great results using this one in smaller offices for instance: https://www.amazon.com/Firewall-Micro-Appliance-Gigabit-Intel/dp/B01JHJGG5M/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1492710644&sr=1-2&keywords=protectli+pfsense) and of course pfSense sells their own as well.

One thing you could try is a dedicated firewall/router appliance. We use something like this (linked item is just what I could find with a quick search to give you an idea) with pfSense on it at the IT service provider I work for. One of the network engineers have them setup where when you are logged into the web browser management portal on it you can download a pre-configured OpenVPN client to install on a computer. Then they just need to run the OpenVPN client as an admin and put in their AD credentials to get VPN'ed in.

This kind of appliance can be muti-tasked as not just a firewall and VPN but also DHCP, DNS, and edge router functions. Have also seen them do internet fail over for our clients that have redundant internet lines.

If you want to do Server and router just get a 4 port NIC

if you want a self-built router with low power get something like this, install pfsense.

That one should be fine. AES-NI should help a ton with any cryptograpgy.

I'm using one of these, running XG for my parents and it works like a champ.

Anyone ever use or know if this would be a good alternative?
Firewall Micro Appliance

I'd like the SG-2440 but price wise :\

Thoughts?

You can totally limit that guy down, get yourself a PFsense Router or build one from an old computer, Look up the tutorials on youtube and you'll have him limited in no time.

its a awesome little box, I have a home wifi and a public wifi that anyone around me can use but its limited to 2mbits.

I do not run snort but i can say that the ram is easily upgrade-able. You could also get this version that has 4gb of ram and a quad core.

https://www.amazon.com/Firewall-micro-appliance-Gigabit-pfSense/dp/B01JHJGG5M/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1487516929&sr=8-3&keywords=pfsense

Thank you Gerdes. I was out last night so didn’t see this until now. So, I think I understand what you mean. Basically, your saying build another pfSense box that will basically perform the duties a layer 3 switch would and then just connect that out to my layer two switches. So, for my setup it would be something like this:

ISP ---- Pf1 ---- Pf2 ---- Cisco 2960-S ---- Other Layer-2 managed switches and devices (servers, pcs, etc.)

Now for that setup above would something like this suffice or would I need more power than that. Also, would it be better to get something like this and just the one box doing everything or is having two like you mentioned better in the end for performance. I initially was going to go with the supermicro for my pfsense box but I have a friend who uses pfsense and he recommended that zotac to me saying that it performed very well. So far, I agree with him. The Zotac has been working very nice.

Now I am just a little confused about how the two pfsense method works. So, my isp comes into my wan port on the zotac and then my LAN port goes to my WAN port on my pfsense 2? Is that correct? Now the other NICs on the pf2, do they get bonded together into my layer 2 cisco or are they each setup as separate physical interfaces? So, I guess what I am asking is, do the vlans get configured across the multiple nics (i.e. opt 1 has vlans 5, 10, and 20, opt2 has 30, etc.) or do the nics get bonded and then I just create all the vlans on that bonded interface? I have one last question. How would my packages in pfsense work? I don’t have a lot right now but for example, I am currently running Snort on my LAN interface in pfsense. How would this work with the method you outlined above? Any packages I do still get activated on my Zotac right? The Pf2 shouldn’t be doing anything other than the vlan routing. Am I correct in saying that?

Sorry for all the questions. I am a bit new to pfSense (only be running it for about a month now) so I want to make sure I do this right. I appreciate all your help thus far Gerdes.