2.5GbE Linux Firewall Micro Appliance Celeron N5105 4xIntel I226 Nic Firewall Router PC Barebone No Ram No SSD AES-NI

Great for a proxmox clustered hypervisor setup.I have 3 of these, each with 64GB of Crucial CT32G4SFD832A RAM, a basic SSD for the boot drive and 2 cheap 2TB NVMe SP002TBP34A60M28 drives in each.This has been rock solid for 2 years and is able to run my Home lab. It's not super fast, but it does what I need... Kubernetes, Home Assistant, Zabbix, Ceph, Pfsense, Various test VMs and containers...The 2.5Gb ethernet ports and the high memory density is what I find compelling, as I can run experiments on the same nodes where I run my home network.I ended-up building a little 3D Printed rack for it with a couple of 120MM fans, just to keep things cool.

This does have a slight appearance of a generic, and I normally use Protectli. I found this one through others reviews, and people who use Protectli had mentioned they used it instead since it’s cheaper. I agree. The product is decent, works very well, easy to use and setup (I use OPNsense). Everything worked out of the box, loaded quickly, and within minutes I was up and running online. Been working for about a month now, with no issues. It is running a local community center, and is providing mostly the full gig speed they have (800Mbps is the test I get most often). This could be due to the other devices/cameras on their network.

My order was shipped from China and was received 2 weeks earlier than originally expected, thanks for that!If you are ordering this, you should be VERY competent in computer networking. (A firewall is in no way something for an inexperienced person to try.)Once received, the coin-battery was loose and rattling inside the computer. The double sided tape that was supposed to hold it to the USB ports did not last shipping halfway around the world, so this is something for the manufacturer needs to correct. (The coin-battery is not heavy enough damage the circuittry inside, and it was completely encased in a rubber shrink wrap.) This is the sole reason for 4 stars, not 5 stars. The computer was not damaged because of the unsecured battery.Since I had the device open, I looked the device over. Everything was installed correctly. (By the way, I am A+ certified, and have built many computers in the past.) The RAM was even secured with hot glue. The RAM and M2-drive were not brands known to most US consumers, but they perform respectable.Once the computer was closed, I did some prep work on my home network. I Changed my mesh WIFI setup to access point(AP) mode. (You should not set it as a router when you have a separate firewall device.) I also made sure to turn off the DHCP server on my cable/DSL modem, and set to bridge mode. (A firewall will have its own DHCP server, 2 DHCP servers will be a bad thing.)pfSense was pre-installed on this device, so in theory you could turn it on and be ready to go. But I, and everyone else should do this, rest the BIOS/UEFI settings, and erased the pre-installed pfSense. I Installed pfsense again with my own settings and configuration. Not that I don't trust the computer manufacturers, I just want to have things done MY way. I was able to get everything done in 2 hours.The big question is "Why did I want my own firewall?" Because my cable provider has my modem locked down, and I cannot make any adjustments with the configuration of a piece of equipment that I purchased. Including updating the firmware on the cable modem, which would fix a known security vulnerability! They will not install the new firmware that would fix the security issue on my behalf either. I understand that you don't want unprofessional users messing with updating the firmware on devices, but to force people to leave their home devices vulnerable to a security threat is unacceptable! ( Ahem... off topic...) Instead of purchasing a new cable modem, I decided to get a firewall that will block the known (and many unknown) security vulnerabilities. The firewall costs about 30% more than a new cable modem, and pfSense is constantly updated, open sourced (so everyone can see what is happening "under the hood" of the program), and free. The new cable modem would also be locked down by the cable company.The four 2.5Gb ethernet ports make this device ready for the long term future. 1Gbe has been standard for 10 years or so, and we are just starting the transition to 2.5Gb. And 2.5Gb can use CAT5e (or CAT6 and higher) cable, which has been the standard cabling installation since 1998-2000. The Intel 5105 CPU is a great choice to do deep packet inspection and not slow down your connection. 8GB RAM and 128GB M2 are both overkill for a firewall, but allows for other things to get installed alongside pfSense in the future.30 days in and I am not having any issues and the machine is working fine. I have an energy monitoring device installed in my circuit breaker panel (for solar panels) and this small computer draws 20-40 watts, depending upon the load. Usually 22 watts.

My firewall router froze and after reset to factory default it bricked out, could not access bios to reinstall pfsense, became useless, finally Moginsok contacted me (tech support is from China, no USA support or website), they admitted that it’s software issue once you reset pfsense software should be reinstalled from scratch, they would do anything not to replace the item, they ask you to take it down apart, remove motherboard battery etc., after reset system BIOS becomes not accessible to load pFsense from USB stick. Long story short I returned the firewall PC. And will give try Protectly Firewall mini PC.

First of all, if you've previously bought a fanless pfSense router from a Chinese vender, this one is *significantly* larger than the previous one. The size is because it has a lot more fins on it than the smaller routers, so many fins that it barely gets warm with my gigabit Comcast cable Internet.Needless to say, don't buy this thing if you don't *thoroughly* understand networking. This is a professional tool for network professionals (or wanna be network professionals), not something that the random person off the street should be buying. To use it with my Comcast xFi service, I had to put the Comcast-provided router into passthrough mode (which does away with the WiFi on the Comcast-provided router), which also meant I had to add WiFi access point for my home network in bridge mode rather than NAT mode. I then could set up a dynamic DNS service in pfSense and CNAME it on my DNS so I could set up OpenVPN to get into my home network from anywhere in the world. If you don't know what any of this is, go buy a consumer router, not this thing.So anyhow, now I have my OpenVPN VPN set up on my laptops and on this router and can VPN in to my security system and video recorder system at home any time that I wish from wherever in the world I am travelling. I can unlock my front door with my home automation system if I need someone to come in to e.g. repair something, and I can watch them walk around my house on the video cameras. None of that was possible with the Comcast-provided router that came with my Xfi service. So. It's doing what it's supposed to do, and it's staying cool doing it. What else would you want from a pfSense router system?