Firewalla: Cyber Security Firewall for Home & Business, Protect Network from Malware and Hacking | Smart Parental Control | Block Ads | VPN Server and Client | No Monthly Fee (Purple SE)

Received this network firewall about a week ago and let me just say it is really well done. It's small size and simple setup (assuming you check your router against their incompatible list of routers on their website) make it rather approachable. I also like how the app you use with it has a well thought out interface that doesn't overwhelm you with information but let's you get deeper insight into your network by navigating the easy to use app. I do wish they would have better means of customizable content filters for groups of devices not all or individual devices. This thing is tiny but oh so powerful up to 100mbps. I have 83 devices currently and it seems to handle it fine. I contacted their support and received help after 5 on a Saturday which was impressive granted it was over email. They provided me with a solution to work around a newly discovered bug with firewalla. It was nothing major for home networks but essentially I had too big of a subnet mask for it to scan devices. The scariest thing about this is it spends all its time collecting alll this data that you may not even be aware is possible to obtain via the network. Monitoring and alarming features work exceptionally well except turning off some notifications such as abnormal activity doesn't turn off abnormal uploads. Having several cloud based cameras renders a lot of these types of alarms. Also I will add that having the map, Whois, and ips really help identify what's happenening with a device and potentially stop it. I noticed also it doesn't block certain activity on its own you have to tell it to allow or block activity. It is working great with my eeros 2nd gen. Can't wait for the firewalla Blue to get more performance out of our internet seeing as we are paying for 300mbps. I think it is definitely a cool new product/startup I also think given everything it gathers it may be concerning as to privacy implications in regards to protecting its database.

I bought the Firewalla Purple SE to understand my home internet traffic and have some level of control over it. As an engineer myself, I have to say this product is exceptionally well engineered and designed. Setup was flawless and the user interface easy to navigate. In addition to internet traffic and control over all my devices, I was able to integrate my 3rd party VNP into its configuration as have an Ad Block function as well. Its all working beyond expectations and, of course, and very high speeds as so to not impede my normal usage.

For about 10 months my Firewalla box worked great. It was easy to set up and the app was easy and effective. About a month ago it died. It would no longer connect to anything. I’ve reached out to Firewalla by email on four separate occasions now. Zero reply! Watch out! At over $200 a pop….I feel it should last more than 10 months!I have an update. Firewalla finally got back to me. After they asked me to do a bunch of troubleshooting which I did over the course of two days, they asked me to buy another piece of equipment to re-flash my unit. I refused. I shouldn’t have to buy a piece of equipment to fix a product that is under warranty. At first they said it wasn’t under warranty…then I sent them proof and they agreed. After being thoroughly frustrated with troubleshooting, I asked them to take this unit back and ship me a new one. They would not do that. I had to ship my old unit back so they could test it and maybe fix it and maybe send it back. It’s really too bad. I loved it when it worked, but my review stays the same. Great when it works….if it doesn’t….good luck. Unless you are very tenacious and keep after Firewalla “customer service” you will be out your $200+. If they somehow redeem themselves…I will change this review….but at this point…I’d never buy another one.

Love firewalla's ease of use

First off as a product, I love this thing. Me and my husband are advocates of open source tech so this drew my attention. I love that the services are free just the cost of the device. I hope that business model doesnt change.TLDR; This will slow down your network pending on which mode you set it to. The most secure is NAT mode but that will limit your bandwidth to 50Mbs download and upload. If your a non techy person and have a faster internet connection go with the blue version of this product. If you are techy read the rest of this post.Now about the actual product. We are foster parents so we are working with teens most of whom have looked up age inappropriate things. Ive tried most open source software to mitigate the damage without affecting the internet experience and have been let down cause almost everything was outdated. I started looking at paid products and this caught my eye. I decided to buy it and I love it. This will lower your max overall bandwidth even between local devices to 50Mbs down and up. For a lot of people this is a deal breaker, so I would recommend the upgraded version of this the Firewalla Blue that one will limit to 500Mbs down and up.We have an 100Mbs connection and we still bought this. Since I am a techy person I setup 2 Wifi networks. One for the parents and one for the kids. I stuck the firewalla on the kids network and left the parent's devices on the main network. Since we are working from now, because of COVID-19, this made sure that we had enough bandwidth for our video conferencing. Since the kid's was capped at 50Mbs as a reserve for us parents.I am in the process of creating some blog posts on how to do this successfully. Will post a link after I do that.In tech lingo, I did this by creating a VLAN and a SSID that is tied to the VLAN. On the router side, I disabled the DHCP and blocked all traffic to the router except from the firewalla IP. Isolated multicast packets from Firewalla to not leave the VLAN. This is so kid's phones can still use devices like chromecast from a different network. Then configure Firewalla to be in NAT mode. Then POOF you have 99% control of the childrens network without it affecting the parents. I say 99% because we have a teen who I'm pretty sure is dedicating 100% of her free time to breaking my network :D.