Vault FW4C - 4 Port, Firewall Micro Appliance/Mini PC - Intel J3710, 2.5G Ports, AES-NI, 8GB DDR3 RAM, 120GB SSD

My old pfSense router/appliance was rebooting and having issues sporadically. I ended up replacing it with this unit and have not had any issues. The Protectli Vault FW4C is a solid little firewall box—fanless, silent, and packed with 4x 2.5G ports. It runs pfSense or OPNsense smoothly for basic routing, VLANs, and light VPN use. The J3710 CPU and 8GB RAM are fine for home or small office setups, but may struggle under heavy loads like deep packet inspection. If you want a reliable, low-noise box for DIY network security, this is a great pick—just don’t expect enterprise-level performance.

I bought this mini PC for being 100% compatible with OPNsense. All BIOS settings were mostly set correctly and did not have to change anything yet. Installing OPNsense was super easy, I downloaded the video vs serial version since I wanted to make sure HDMI port works and also I observed RS232 mirrored output. CPU is perfect for this device, not too powerful requiring active cooling, but powerful enough for advanced networking configuration. Bonus Intel CPU does AES in hardware. Swapped out my ASUS router/AP for this and repurposed the ASUS as an access point since the Wi-Fi radios worked great. VLANs and DDNS did not seem to affect performance and heatsink temperature never was hot, always just warm. More experimentation to hammer the device is coming next. I would not hesitate to buy another one! Completely happy with this device!

I have this loaded up with OpnSense, and it just works. I'm not even using the extra network options, though I have a couple of ideas of how I might. My Starlink ethernet plugs into this, and then I run my ASUS WiFi router off of this. OpnSense handles network security for everybody (and IP assignement) while the Starlink WiFi is still available for guests, but outside of the home network proper. Performance is good, and it doesn't get very hot for home use. My instincts say a modular system where you can swap out a blown network card are the way to go, but in practice this unit is inexpensive enough that it saves time and hassle to replace the whole unit, and it uses less power and has a smaller trash footprint than a full-sized system. Sorry, instincts. One reason I like to run OpnSense is that I can IP address (or MAC address!) block Chinese spy cams from Internet access while still using them on the internal network. Bottom line, take back control of your network connection. Get one of these, and learn to use one of the amazing free, opensource router programs out there.

I bought this about a year ago for my 1 Gbps fiber service and was very happy with it (good performance, quiet, well built, etc). However, I recently switched to 2.5 Gbps fiber service. It seems to have just enough CPU headroom to run comfortably at wire speed with basic NAT configuration, but if you're doing VPN, packet inspection, etc. it's bound to start slowing down the rest of the network. Protectli recently unveiled a newer 4 port router, Protectli Vault V1410, with a CPU that should be a bit more than twice as fast and for a little less money. That's what I'd pick if I were buying today.

Easily mounts to wall or desk with plenty of horsepower to run PFSense. Handles PFSense 2.7 Easy to work with before install, audible tones when power off / power on. Great replacement for my previous overpowered machine. No problems through 3+ months of uptime (minus purposeful reboots).

I ended up ordering this right after upgrading from 1gig fiber to 2 gig fiber. My provider does provide ont that's compatible with up to 10gig service but unfortunately the router accepts up to 10gig in and 1 gig per Ethernet port. I wanted to be able to utilize all 2 gigs on one device if I wanted to. As you can see the speed throughput is not an issue. It is completely silent with no audible hum or anything. I did throw a small old CPU fan on had laying around on top. It's been running for a month now with zero issues. I'm run pfsense for routing duties.

Everything in the listing says US but it's made in China which should be CLEARY stated in the listing somewhere. Disappointing because I wanted it to be made in the US. Designed and headquartered are a thin veil at most.

I replaced my old Protectli firewall with this newer model and it is a perfect firewall appliance for my home network. Easy to set up and configure, and it just works. My old Protectli firewall died after running 24/7 for 9 years so if this new one last as long I'll be happy.

I setup OPNSense on this and it’s runs amazingly well. Getting 2.5gb connection to my PC on a direct connection and a 16 port gigabyte switch on another. Have yet to vlan anything but it’s rock solid. I did upgrade the RAM to 8Gb and the HD (m.2) to 256gb first day I had it. Did a test install on the old then replaced and did the real install. I would definitely buy one of these again!

Protectli Vault is a Mini PC that can easily be setup to run the more popular Unix variants around including FreeBSD, Ubuntu, OpenBSD, Linux and as far as I can tell, can even run some versions of the Citrix XenServer Hypervisor. It does not have a TPM chip onboard so if you want a Windows 11 system or Windows Server, you might want to consider and research Protectli's Vault Pro (VP) series. Once the operating system is up and running, you can run any service you like on it including firewall/IPS, email server, database server, LDAP server and so on. The 4 port 2.5Gbps speeds means that the appliance can scale when the network is upgraded above the current gigabit network. That's 2.5Gb support on the WAN interface to your ISP! Support for OpenVPN and WireGuard just means this appliance can easily have a VPN configured in a site-to-site configuration or it can simply be used as a client to a VPN provider that connects your entire home/office over a single VPN connection rather than every device having to establish its own VPN channel. I did exactly what others have done, plugged a monitor into the HDMI port (you can also opt to connect via the RJ45 console port), plugged in a keyboard and boot into an operating system/software install. At this stage, I am running OPNSense (firewall) with its Suricata IPS build (intrusion prevention) and Adware Home (privacy). I will probably play around with it some more to add a site to site VPN at some stage. With all these key services along with core services such as dhcp, cron, ntpd, etc, the Vault runs at a steady 39C/102F, chews up 3% consistently with the occasional spikes going up to 40%+ CPU utilisation. You can run everything off a graphical user interface for most Unix variants and firewall products such as OPNSense but eventually you will need to jump into issuing commands via a shell interface. Highly Recommended.

Der Protectli Vault FW4C ist eine erstklassige Wahl für alle, die eine robuste und flexible Firewall-Hardware benötigen. Ich habe OPNsense darauf installiert, und die Kombination funktioniert hervorragend für mein Heimnetzwerk. Der Vault FW4C ist kompakt, aber leistungsstark. Das robuste Metallgehäuse sorgt nicht nur für eine gute Wärmeableitung, sondern auch für eine lange Lebensdauer des Geräts. Die lüfterlose Bauweise ermöglicht einen geräuschlosen Betrieb, was besonders angenehm ist, wenn das Gerät in Wohnräumen oder Büros eingesetzt wird. Die Installation von OPNsense verlief reibungslos. Das Gerät ist perfekt kompatibel und bietet eine hervorragende Leistung, selbst bei anspruchsvollen Firewall-Regeln, VPN-Verbindungen und umfangreichen Netzwerkaufgaben. Die vier Gigabit-Ethernet-Ports bieten genügend Anschlussmöglichkeiten, um verschiedene Netzwerkkonfigurationen abzudecken. In meinem Netzwerk hat sich die Performance als stabil und zuverlässig erwiesen, selbst bei hoher Belastung. Ein weiterer Pluspunkt ist die Vielseitigkeit des Protectli Vault FW4C. Obwohl ich mich für OPNsense entschieden habe, bietet das Gerät auch Unterstützung für andere Open-Source-Firewall-Lösungen wie pfSense, was es zu einer flexiblen Option für verschiedene Bedürfnisse macht. Insgesamt bin ich mit dem Protectli Vault FW4C und der darauf installierten OPNsense-Software äußerst zufrieden. Es ist die perfekte Lösung für alle, die eine leistungsfähige, sichere und leicht konfigurierbare Firewall für ihr Netzwerk suchen. Für Heim- und kleine Unternehmensnetzwerke ist diese Kombination eine klare Empfehlung. Klare 5 Sterne!

I am using this device for two months with PFSense and it is working flawlessly. My network is quite complicate with different site-to-site VPNs and heavy internet/wifi use but still 0 problems! Highly recommended!

Wordt gebruikt in plaats van mijn Ubiquiti USG die toch wel veel beperkingen had ten opzichte van PFsense op deze Protectli. Mooie nette solide box. Zeer tevreden mee