Looking for firewall box, suggestions?

[Rifter]

I would love to go with one of the intel NUC's because they seems to be good quality but they only have 1 network port, i need a minimum of 2, more would be great..

Before i go ahead and order one of those cheap made in china qotom boxes are there any better options?

Right now im looking at the Qotom-Q310G4 which has a intel 3215U CPU and 4 Intel network ports.

Is there any higher quality NUC size boxes i should be looking at before i pull the pin?

This will be for running pfsense and a bunch of packages.

Thanks.

 

[XavierMace]

There are a couple of NUC's with dual NIC's. Only a couple though and only two ports. Personally I'd build my own though. Supermicro's got a variety of mini-ITX SoC with 2+ network ports. 10GbE and/or 1GbE. Drop it in something like a Silverstone VT01B, now you've got your own firewall NUC. MIght be more than you're looking to spend though. X10SDV-4C-TLN2F has the Xeon D-1541 (4c/8t) or the X10SDV-2C-TLN2F has the Pentium D 1508 (2c/4t).

 

[zeekr]

I built a firewall/router box using exactly the same model: Qotom-Q310G4, a few months ago. It's been running pfSense great. It has all Intel NIC, which is what I was looking for, as opposed to Realtek for most of these devices you find on AliExpress. My box sits between my fibre ONT and my wifi router, which runs the home network. Does get a little bit warm to touch but I've never had problems with it. In fact I just checked and the thing has been up straight for last 74 days.

 

[Rifter]

I built a firewall/router box using exactly the same model: Qotom-Q310G4, a few months ago. It's been running pfSense great. It has all Intel NIC, which is what I was looking for, as opposed to Realtek for most of these devices you find on AliExpress. My box sits between my fibre ONT and my wifi router, which runs the home network. Does get a little bit warm to touch but I've never had problems with it. In fact I just checked and the thing has been up straight for last 74 days.

Good to hear, ive just herd less than stellar things about the RMA process with Qotom so was wondering if there were any non china based alternatives. But ill likely go the same route you did and buy this thing and hope for the best.

 

[cleverhandle]

I don't know their current lineup or how it stacks up to newer offerings, but Soekris has been a player in this space for many years now and has a good reputation. I've had an OpenBSD firewall running on a Net5501 for years with zero trouble. Might be worth a look.