This is the Installation Troubleshooting Guide for Firewalla Red, Blue and Blue Plus, If you have any problem in pairing with Firewalla Gold, see Firewalla Gold Installation Troubleshooting. 

If at any stage you have problems, please feel free to open a support case using this link. We will guarantee to respond in less than 24 hours.

If you are using a mesh router, please take a look at this article:  Mesh Setup Guide 

The compatibility guide also includes a few workarounds.  Take a look: Compatibility Guide.

Quick Check List:

Please make sure you have the latest application installed.

Pairing Time:

• When Firewalla is powered up for the first time, it will take up to 5 mins to complete the software update, please be patient.
• For security reasons, the 'pairing window' is only 1 hour from the time Firewalla powered up.  Pairing with your iPhone / Android app must be done within 1 hour.  If you missed the pairing window, please power cycle the box to restart the pairing window.
  • This is the best sequence to connect:
    1. Plugin firewalla
    2. wait for 5 mins
    3. launch app on your iPhone/Android
    4. follow the directions to pair.  

Connections: 

• Make sure the SD Card is securely pushed in. 
• Use the enclosed USB adapter for power. If you use your own, make sure it supports 5V/2A. (You can experiment with powering Firewalla with USB ports on your router. But make sure they are USB 3.0 ports, USB 2.0 may not work, and can cause problems.) 
• Make sure Ethernet cable is securely connected on both ends.

Wi-Fi & VPN: 

• Make sure your phone is connected to the same Wi-Fi network as your Firewalla connects to.
• Double-check and see if you have any security software or anything like VPN running on your mobile phone, such as Lookout, Airwatch, MobileIron...  Please temporarily turn them off.

For Advanced Networks:

• Make sure multicast from LAN to Wifi is on.  (Some advanced router turns this off)
• Make sure the gateway or router can be pinged from inside the LAN.  (Some router may be configured not to respond to ping packets. )
• Make sure your existing firewall doesn't block outside connections from Firewalla.  
• If you are security services running on your router and are having a problem finding firewalla, please turn that service off during installation.

QR License Scan Errors:

If you are getting any QR Scanning errors, it may be an MDNS issue with your network environment.  Please try this

1. Kill Firewalla App
2. On your phone, go to Airplane mode, wait 10 seconds, and come back to wifi.  This step will flush all the networking based Cache.
3. Unplug Firewalla and wait 10 mins
4. Plug Firewalla back in
5. Wait 5 min for the box to boot up
6. Launch Firewalla App
7. Restart the pairing process.

Status Lights Check:

Firewalla has the following lights to indicate the status of the box.  (Sorry, we don't like the traditional status light.) 

• there are two lights next to the ethernet port, one on each side
• peering through the side vent hole, there are two lights inside

What do these lights mean?  Please see the following instruction.

Fail to Boot up:

If after 10 mins plugin power, the box failed to boot up, you should see one of the following light indications:

• two lights (one green and one yellow) next to the ethernet port are solid on
• the inside light is flashing

Follow this instruction to do a hard reset of the box:
https://help.firewalla.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004796633-Flashing-Image

Ready for Pairing:

When Firewalla is fully booted and ready for pairing (it may take up 5 mins), you should see:

• only a green light next to the ethernet is blinking
• the inside light is solid red (some old version has a blue light)
• and a “New Firewalla” appears in Firewalla app

Old Version of Firewalla Red (Firewalla Red purchased before May 2018, likely is the with blue light inside.)

New Version of Firewalla Red (Red light inside)

Firewalla Blue (Red light inside)

Self-Diagnostic Page:

If you have done all the above checks, but Firewalla APP still can’t find the box, the following tool can give some clue of what's going on. 

Open a browser on your phone or on your computer, type https://diag.firewalla.com/ on the address bar, it will bring up this page.

Check 1: If you don't see your box in the list, most likely the box failed to boot up.   Please go to your router and look at its DHCP table see if you see Firewalla there.  (MAC address starts with 02:xx:xx). If you do not see Firewalla there, please contact us https://help.firewalla.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

Check 2: Check the box IP address and your phone IP address to see if they are in the same network.  (To double check the IP address of the Firewalla box, login to your router's admin UI page to find out.)

Check 3: Click on the IP address of the box that you are having trouble to pair, it will show more detail status of the box.  

• If you see the welcome page, it means the box is up running and ready to pair.  There may be other things caused not able to pair.  Please contact us for help.

• If you see the following checklist page, it means something is not right with the box.  Please capture this screen and email it to help@firewalla.com.