Fanless Micro Firewall Appliance Intel J4125 Quad Core, 4 Intel 2.5GbE i225/i226 LAN Ports Fanless Mini Computer 8GB RAM DDR4 128GB mSATA SSD, Network Gateway Soft Router, Support AES NI (8G 128G)

This fanless micro firewall appliance was exactly what I was looking for. Built sturdy, competitively priced, and it has been ticking along for several weeks. Very stable.

I purchased one of these to test its applicability for pfsense/opnsense in a Caribbean environment (think - hot and humid, and remote, so no moving parts to fail over time, and high heat tolerance).Loaded both pfsense and opnsense on the box - both run fantastically well, the only oddity was that opnsense numbers the ports in the reverse order (i.e. ige0 -> port 4 instead of ige0 -> port 1). I hope that won't impact the long-term upgradability of the unit (i.e. upgrade to new opnsense and it numbers the ports as pfsense does, or vice versa, which would break all connections because cables would be in the wrong ports).The unit did not come with a VESA mount, as advertised, but that's okay as I don't plan on using that anyways. The unit also has some odd things on the motherboard - there is a second MSATA port but it doesn't work even though there's a second SATA port listed in the BIOS (which, I suppose, is the standard black SATA port on the motherboard, even though there's no provision for a 2.5" disk in this enclosure, as other similar units do). There's also a listed USB and COM interface in the BIOS, which are present on the motherboard but not pinned/cabled/used, and two SIM slots that are empty and unused.There's also no documentation online for this unit, and no printed instructions came with it. Can't expect that at this price point, but at the same time it would be helpful to know if there was, for instance, a jumper or BIOS setting that would enable the second MSATA port, or why enabling the watchdog timer sends the unit into an endless BIOS reboot spiral until you hold the reset button. No website to download things like manuals or BIOS updates is a risk you have to take on something this inexpensive.All in all, it's a powerful unit, and if you're looking for a small, fanless pfsense/opnsense/untangle box, this is an excellent choice. But I would urge customers to look at other units like the Protectli, or the HUNSN RJ03, which has all the same basic hardware but also dual NVME slots, dual screen outputs, a slightly faster CPU, and provision for a 2.5" drive, for around $50 more (but the upgrades are worth it, IMO).

I got this as a prime day sale and installed opnsense firewall on it, was easy to do and it handles opnsense fine.

This thing worked great for the first year I had it, but i'm already having to replace it. I have installed proxmox running PFSense and it worked great for a while, then all of a sudden I would loose internet access.If I log into proxmox everything looks fine, but I can't access the web UI of PFSense. Reboot PFSense and it will work for a while, and then crash again. I believe my LAN nic is starting to have issues, since I can still access the proxmox web UI (through one of the other onboard nics)just not the PFSense web UI.I installed OPNsense instead thinking maybe it was a PFSense issue, and boom, same thing. Now the power LED is barely illuminating, and the router only works with a very light load, as soon as im streaming video or downloading at full speed it crashes the NIC and stops internet traffic.If you are going to use this, maybe buy a USB fan to minimize heat. My guess is the unit got to hot for one of the NICs and now its having issues, but it was able to dissipate the heat to not hurt the processor, but I'm just guessing. Word of warning!

I Really like this thing, I am keeping it, and I might buy a 2nd. it is fast (for what it is), and the 2.5gb nics clock out at 2.35gb bidirectional transfer, so that's great. KVM Virtualization works great, and it has enough ram to run a few router or utility VMs. You can even upgrade it to 16gb if needed.Now for the cons...This cannot perform PXE boot off it's built-in NICs. there are PXE BIOS options, but I Don't think the NICs support PXE. I went around and around with support, but... at the end of the day, PXE Does not work. Product looses one star for this because it explicitly says it supports PXEI can't get to BIOS from the HDMI connector. I might actually have a defective unit, dmidecode from within the OS Shows it has an HDMI connector internally. I don't really need HDMI. it would be nice, but VGA is fine. Based on the PXE bug, I suspect there may be an engineering bug involving the HDMI output too. I suspect that HDMI output may only work if you're running a GUI OS, but inability to get to BIOS From the HDMI display is kinda a problem. no bios=no work. Product looses one star for having a non-functional or limited-functionality HDMI output.This thing is really cool. I like it a lot, but it has two major flaws, at least of of which (maybe both) appear to be design flaws. it's not perfect, but neither am I. I like this hardware, but can't give it 5 stars.

I bought this almost 2 years ago and have been running opnsense on it. It took lots of tweaking to prevent the unit from shutting down due to overheating. But finally got it stable.Now, after a reboot, the system will no longer connect on any ethernet port and will randomly shut off. Got my money's worth out of it, but not sure I would purchase another.

Works perfectly with pfsense for a custom home router