Update (Jan 2023): Added Protectli Vault FW4C. If you are new to pfSense, then I recommend taking the “ pfSense Fundamentals – Secure Your Network With pfSense” course to learn about its features and make the most out of your pfSense box. However, if you want to use the free and open-source pfSense software (pfSense CE), then you need to install it on third-party hardware. You’ll see some of them in this list too. The official pfSense hardware is developed by Netgate. However, in this article, we will solely focus on the best pfSense hardware. There are many great ready-to-use hardware firewalls on the market. You can install pfSense on an old PC, Mini PC or even run pfSense as a virtual machine. I'm working with 1000/500 fiber connection and would prefer to not bottleneck it badly.PfSense is a free and open-source network firewall distribution. Is there possibly a big performance hit having Protectli box handling WAN traffic to multiple internal ports? Or complications if I plan to add some IDS/IPS (Snort or Suricata) in the future? Should I get a managed switch and connect LAN port to that and all the rest (PCs, Wifi AP etc.) and then sort the access rights (I wish to keep IoT separate) using VLANs? I would follow these instructions to enable those optional ports

Ideally only the home PC in LAN port would be able to access the pfsense admin controls. I was thinking of using the Protectli Vault 6 additional ports to handle Wifi AP (Unifi 6 pro for phone and IoT (Chromecast, TVs, smart clocks, lights)) and some specific other devices (work PC, home PC and PS5).Īre there any disadvantages to having my home PC connected to LAN, Wifi AP to OPT1 and work PC to OPT2 (perhaps PS5 to OPT3)? I don't need/want these networks to talk to each other (only to outside WAN, the Wifi AP works as a switch so that Chromecast would work with my phone?). I'm new to using pfSense and trying to figure the best way to set up my home network.

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