Protectli FW2B vs SG-3100

Ok so I think I’ve narrowed down that I want to get to either an SG-3100 (~$370 with slow boat from China shipping) or a Protectli FW2B ($269 +tax w/ Amazon Prime 2 Day shipping).

They both can route at line speed. The OpenVPN performance on the FW2B is “ok” but still 5x what my upload speed is so it really won’t matter much because I won’t max it out. Not entirely sure on the SG-3100.

I’m kinda liking the idea of the Protectli. I know Tom has reviewed the bigger…badder FW6 with the quad-core Celeron so I have an idea of what to expect (yes I know it won’t keep up with the FW6, but I really don’t need it to).

I’m also not all that convinced that I need/want Suricata at this time, but I am curious if anyone has any experience with this box and its routing performance once you add some IDS/IPS.

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I don’t own both products you mention so I can’t speak for them, but I can share my insights. If you want to use Inline IPS of suricata , you need a NIC driver that support FreeBSD netmap, and Protectli FW2B NIC driver is i211-AT and AFAIK, FreeBSD netmap support it.

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Good to know.

Now I’m trying to decide between a Protectli device or buying an older Dell Optiplex with a 2nd/3rd generation i5. The Protectli is lower power usage which is good, but the Dell will destroy its processing power.

Decisions decisions.