SG-1000 microFirewall with pfSense Software

This just isn't enough hardware to handle the demands of a modern home / office. The cpu is maxed out constantly, and can't maintain an HD stream from AWS / Netflix / HBO, etc. Switched back to my Ubiquiti EdgeRouter lite and I can do full 4k HD streaming. Still waiting for support to respond, it is possible I have a defective unit, but I suspect its the low end hardware.I have built my own pfsense devices before, and was looking for something out of the box that could handle site-to-site and some basic streaming, this should have fit the bill.Update: after working with support monitoring a ton of resources doing multiple fsck repairs, the problem has been confirmed that the pfsense software just doesn't perform well on this hardware when using the web interface. The traffic graph alone will max out the CPU and cause connections to drop. Juts loading any admin interface page is slow.I am torn because I want to support pfsense but this hardware as an entry level just can't keep up with similarly priced competition.

I bought this back in 2018… for some reason, not sure. Anyway, it has sat in a cabinet over my desk for six years.Recently, one of our clients began having issues because they were using incredibly outdated SonicWalls. While awaiting replacements, we came up with the idea to use this little thing.After a couple of false starts updating the software, it is now providing internet for a small bakery/deli.

I take care of security issues for some small businesses with multiple locations. I do not use these as my primary firewalls. But, given the budget that I have to work with, I keep one of these next to every firewall we have as an emergency backup. I keep them configured and ready to go in case of a failure of the primary firewalls. For the price and for what they do, they provide so much piece of mind knowing that I have a backup firewall everywhere I need them across my enterprise.

These have an ARM processor so a lot of the pfsense packages are missing / unsupported versus an intel-based device. It's also too slow to do anything besides the most basic routing, I wouldn't try to use it on an internet connection over 10mbits. Other networking devices typically have hardware acceleration to improve performance but it looks like that didn't work out here for some reason, so it's about a hundred times slower than you'd expect. Even trying to run the software updates times out and fails more than half the time.

Excellent small router appliance. Tiny footprint. Unfortunately max throughout was about 10mbit from a 1000mbit cable modem with home stock configuration. I expected a bit of a bandwidth hit, but but a 90% reduction. I will use it on sub 100mbit connections and it will be fine.

Nice to configure, and lots of features, but sadly it lags like crazy, even on a 100 mbit cox cable connection. Speed tests directly connected to it yield about 25 Mbps if its freshly booted, and cold. Once it warms up, speed drops to 8-14 Mbps, and remains there forever. Had not added any nat rules, or turned on any other features. Bypassed it, and tested at the modem, and got 125Mbps/20mbps sustained. They seriously over-rate the computational power of this unit. I got tired of it and bought a QNAP TS-451 since i needed a NAS anyway, and installed OPNSense in its virtualization station, best firewall ive ever had now. And speed tests match up to the modem now too.

I bought it to serve DHCP and DNS to a home network. It provides these services with no issues. Easy to configure and set up. I noticed that it also offers NTP so I thought I would set that up too. Doesn't work. I spent 10X more time trying to get NTP to work than DHCP and DNS. Since I don't need NTP I only dinged one star. Still, the SG-1000 log time stamps are days off in time.

Extremely slow through-put and get's hot. it's nice to look at, but what is advertised on their site does not even come close to real world expectations. I had it on a comcast 200/10 connection and could barely sustain 50mbps