Reddit reviews Protectli Vault 4 Port, Firewall Micro Appliance/Mini PC - Intel Quad Core, 4GB RAM, 8GB mSATA SSD

I would assume things like this

I have gigabit fiber and got this box: https://amzn.com/B01AJEJG1A

LOVE it. Handles gigabit beautifully.

From my experience messing with a dozen different routers I'd suggest anyone that wants an all in one package that does almost anything a person interested in home networking would want to do to get a firewall micro appliance/ or this barebones version if you have spare ram and msata drive around, or can get your own cheap) or going even cheaper and using any old pc laying around (after buying an extra NIC card for it) and putting Sophos XG/UTM9 home edition or Pfsense on it. Both are free. Both are equally amazing in securing a network and doing many other things. differences between the two, though pfsense has improved since this post so maybe take that into consideration. Lots of support online on how to set either of these up. /r/pfsense, youtube has lots of videos for both.

pfsense on a netgate or similar.

This one will handle multiple VPN connections much better because it has AES-NI:
https://www.amazon.com/Firewall-Micro-Appliance-Gigabit-AES-NI/dp/B0742P83HY

If you aren't doing much encryption (VPN Traffic) you can save a little money (this is the box that I use at home):
https://www.amazon.com/Firewall-micro-appliance-Gigabit-Intel/dp/B01AJEJG1A

Edit: as /u/snarfattack and /u/svenvv noted the one that I linked below (with a Celeron J1900) doesn't support AES-NI and will not be compatible with PFSense 2.5.

Looks good but at when you're looking for one of the refurbs and you're looking to put another LAN card in it you might consider just going with a fanless box like this one. This is what I use and I love it.

With that said your plan for the refurb should work fine; I used to run mine off similar boxes quite comfortably.

I've been running this guy for about a year now. So much better than any of the off the shelf routers.

https://smile.amazon.com/Firewall-micro-appliance-Gigabit-Intel/dp/B01AJEJG1A

> What about this? https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01AJEJG1A/ looking at this video, its a quad core celeron.

Nope, Atom based and no AES-NI = slow VPN. Again, quad, 8, 16+ core does zero for OpenVPN. A fast dual core is much better for this use case.

> EDIT: Here is their new one, https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0741F634J/

That would certainly give far better performance in OpenVPN than any Atom based system. Not sure if it would make it to 500 Mbps, but likely close.

You may also want to look at something like the Qotom q355g4 which has a faster i5 CPU.

Take a look at this pre built box I found on Amazon. I have one and it works great!

Could also go with a cheaper version like this one.

Or finally for a super small one, This 2 port version was just released. I just ordered one to test.

So, as I'm sure you're aware, a generic "router" you get is actually a router, firewall, switch, and AP built into one device.

pfSense is an open source router/firewall that's built on top of Linux/OpenBSD. It's pretty simple to setup as it has a nice GUI but it also supports a lot of advanced features. It basically can run on anything with a processor, memory, HDD, and a NIC. Now optimally you want something that has at least 2x GB Intel ports.

I have my pfSense currently running on a mini ITX computer with an i5-2500k as I had it laying around, but that consumes a little more power.

Some people use devices like this which are low power and fanless. Some people buy little boxes like this where you add your own RAM/HDD/SSD and it's also low power.

The only thing that sucks is that this stuff costs money. Even when you buy used gear, it's still not as cheap as buying generic stuff. You can go to Best Buy and get some crazy Nighthawk all in one device for $200-300.

With this route you're going to spend $200+ on a pfSense router/firewall, ~$30-100 on a managed switch, and $50-100 on an AP but you have much more control over your environment.

Or you could go with a Ubiquiti router/gateway/firewall for ~$100 and then add on a managed switch and AP.

Or some people buy a virtualization server and run their pfSense firewall on a VM. Decently equipped servers can be had for $200-500 when all said and done.

There's really a lot of options.

I work in an area of netsec and have my switch mirroring/SPANing all the traffic to Snort which sends all the alerts to a Splunk box. You can also run Snort directly on a pfSense box.

I have one of these and it is brilliant:

https://www.amazon.com/Firewall-micro-appliance-Gigabit-Intel/dp/B01AJEJG1A/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1496019883&sr=8-2&keywords=pfsense

I use the OPT interfaces trunked to a managed switch and a wireless AP (ASUS router with tomato shibby). It's quiet, fanless and it runs snort, pfBlockerNG, OpenVPN 24/7 just fine! I have at least 5 clients running all the time and a Plex server that friends use. It's a beautiful little box.

I bought one of these, (but w/o ram and storage since I already had it)

never looked back.
runs w/o fan, fairly cheap for what you get. And I had no problems getting it going.
64bit, and its got enough cpu headroom that encryption / vpn isn't an issue with 1 - 3 users.

https://www.amazon.com/Firewall-micro-appliance-Gigabit-Intel/dp/B01AJEJG1A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1511615877&sr=8-1&keywords=pfsense+box

Protecli

Excellent. One more thing, comparing a netgate box to something like this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01AJEJG1A/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_pUyCybV02ABSP
Is it worth purchasing dedicated hardware with the ASIC, or is it hard to tell the difference? Saw this and it's got similar specs to the 2440.

I just got one of these about a month ago. Very solid so far.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01AJEJG1A/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I have dual cable internet going into the thing, so far it has handled everything i've thrown at it...

What about this? https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01AJEJG1A/ looking at this video, its a quad core celeron. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMNkJBtDWYE


EDIT: Here is their new one, https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0741F634J/

this oughtta do ya fine: https://www.amazon.com/Firewall-Micro-Appliance-Intel-PFSense/dp/B01AJEJG1A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1482219924&sr=8-1&keywords=pfsense



I have 3 that I've installed so far, one at work, one at home and one for a media company that has gig fiber. It's plenty fast.

I've got two sites that do this on old Netgate APU4s.

For modern hardware, you'd want the SG-2440. It's got 4 ports so you can easily hang 3 ISPs off it if you want. From there setting up load balance and failover is pretty easy (there are guides for this).

Now as far as budget- the SG-2440 is $550, which is less than you'd pay for a 'big name' router (Cisco etc) with similar features.

However if budget is a primary concern, you could go with other hardware.

Amazon has this noname NUC-based China box for $270. It seems to have good reviews, but keep in mind you're on your own with that- have to install pfSense yourself and no official support if you have a problem.

Alternatively, you could always just grab a spare old PC, blow all the dust out / make sure there's no bad caps, run memtest86+ for a while to make sure it's stable, and then call it a router. I recommend replacing HDD with a cheap small SSD. A quad port Ethernet card will finish that build and make it a useful router. Again, installation is all you and there's no support like there is with official hardware.

Hope that helps!

1000 CAD is going to be plenty.

ebay store mrrackables has tons of storage machines you can snag up for 300-500 usd which can solve most of your needs. (nas + vm support)

From there you can pick up a mini pfsense box for 200-300 and a switch for 100-200.

Max spent would be 1000 usd or low end 750 usd

https://www.amazon.com/Firewall-micro-appliance-Gigabit-Intel/dp/B01AJEJG1A/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1494349383&sr=8-2&keywords=pfsense

This is the pfsense box I use for my 300/100 cable and it works fine. I picked up a great netgear switch with POE for 50$ off mercari

For raid, it depends on what you want to spend $$$ wise some options can be cheaper then others.

Edit: conversion

1000 Canadian Dollar equals
727.00 US Dollar

Oops linux... linux on everything.

For pfsense, I eventually plan on using something like this when I feel like blowing more money.. I've considered running it in a VM but I'd prefer to have a dedicated box for the router. My esxi box has dual gigabit nics, and a free PCIe slot if I wanted to add more, so I can technically do it

For adblocking, you can look into the pi-hole project - basically, with no more than a raspberry pi you can do a vast majority of adblocking. I have some firewall level rules for adblocking, but the vast majority of it is done at the DNS level, as pi-hole does.

A simpler way to use that laptop (or NUC), look into this minipcie gigabit NIC. As long as your laptop already has a (gigabit) NIC, that would you get the requite number of ports to play with pfSense. Though, the bios whitelisting thing still applies - you'd want to check into that first. The NUC shouldn't have that issue.

Truthfully, at the most basic level, there's not a huge difference in a pfSense box vs a conventional wireless router, in regards to basic firewall functionality. By default, both are going to deny all incoming connections that don't have an explicit exception (port forwarding), and outgoing traffic is not touched. Of course, there's rather more (okay, a lot more) configuration available compared to a normal router, even one with dd wrt or openwrt.

For basic routing/firewall duties, there exist a number of basic atom-powered boxes (not far removed from your NUC!) that are relatively inexpensive, that are more than capable of doing the job. I've heard this one is popular, though I'm sure there are more options. You'd be better off checking out /r/pfsense for more recommendations.

Where more CPU horsepower (and pfSense) comes in handy is if you want to do something like run counter-intrusion software such as snort, which monitors traffic for suspicious patterns (known exploits, bad servers, or malware traffic, for instance) and can then block offenders. Another case would be if you want to perform virus scanning/malware on web browsing traffic via squid and clamav. Or, if you would like to direct traffic over a VPN at the network level. All of these require a bit more gumption than your basic off the shelf router has going for it. Of course, all of these require a bit of tweaking to get dialed in, but that's half the fun.

How about this?
https://www.amazon.com/Firewall-micro-appliance-Gigabit-Intel/dp/B01AJEJG1A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491318296&sr=8-1&keywords=pfsense

You'll need a firewall. Theres some off the shelf products but I use this firewall with pfsense https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01AJEJG1A/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_l0uBCbV27Z104

Then you'll need something like dyndns so you can reference your VPN by DNS vs IP.

I was looking to upgrade my Alix 2D3 to something like this. I did NOT purchase it and I have no affiliation with the seller, you can search on ebay and other places for similar hardware. I'm keeping an eye out for something like that but maybe in the $150 range. Right now I moved to a consumer router that I got for a great deal. It's running a custom firmware, offers dual wan, and it's working out well enough for what I need at home but does have some quirky issues. I do miss pfSense, if I find a good deal on low watt system I'll probably jump back.

Occasionally you can find decent info on the pfSense forums as well.

I bet they ordered this: Firewall Micro Appliance With 4x Gbe Intel Lan Ports for PFSense https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01AJEJG1A/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_Eit2xbB7ECEXX

What was your total after getting all the required components?

This unit seems to be the perfect pfSense box:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01AJEJG1A/

In hardware form, you can have a look at these options, but they are expensive.

• Sophos XG85 - $250 + whatever the web filtering license is, I couldn't find the pricing.
  
  
• pfSense SG-2220 - $279. Great software, you can get a ton of modules to do whatever you want. It might not be the most easy thing to configure, but there are lots of tutorials on the net.
  
  
• Meraki MX64 - $595 for the device, $600/yr for the advanced license to get the filtering. Extremely powerful, quite easy to setup, but it's the most expensive. I put it here more as a comparison.
  
  If you have an old PC, you can load up pfSense on it for free. Get a $15 network card so you have two interface and voila. It will do the exact same thing as the SG-2220 for a fraction of the cost.
  
  Hope this helps.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01AJEJG1A

Looks the same as some other units, but it has pfsense specific labeling (OPT1, OPT2, etc). Loads of 5 star reviews and i've been super happy with the performance.

How about this router Firewall Micro Appliance With 4x Gbe Intel Lan Ports for PFSense https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01AJEJG1A/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_49sDybS33ETKK

https://www.amazon.com/Firewall-Micro-Appliance-Intel-PFSense/dp/B01AJEJG1A/ref=sr_1_2?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1485315653&sr=1-2&keywords=pfsense

these are cheap, and have good reviews.

I am currently using an old PC so have been looking at my options. Thought I would share.

A Dell R210 II is reputed to be great for PFSense and go for $200 on ebay, cheaper than your build.

Or look at an Intel NUC. They're tiny and fanless, a great combo for an edge device. Around $250 new.

Or go with the PC. Quieter than rackmount, and you can control the quality by buying new, replaceable parts.

Or something like these:

Appliance

Mini PC