Thank you for purchasing Firewalla; here is a quick guide to help you get to know your unit better. For a more complete guide, please see https://firewalla.com/pages/user-manual
If you are running into any issues running Firewalla please see our troubleshooting guide
Learn about the App
Firewalla is controlled via the iOS or Android app. Here is a good 3 mins overview of what it can do.
Interactive App Tutorials
Click on the screen below to learn more about the user interface and features.
Learn more about your network
Devices
Once the Firewalla box is installed, it will automatically discover devices on your network. It may take the box up to a couple of hours to fully learn the names of the devices. You can also reserve IP addresses under the Device view.
How to manage Devices
If you want to change the names of your devices, here is how. (If the default device name is cryptic, wait a couple of hours, they may get better.
Rename connected devices
You can also group several devices together, and manage the group similar to managing a device, including adding rules, viewing network history, etc.
Learn more about device group
With the introduction of 1.971 on the Gold, you can now automatically quarantine new devices on the network with the "device quarantine feature"
Learn more about the device quarantine
Bandwidth Usage Insights
The top graph shows the bandwidth usage of your network, in the 60 minutes, 24 hours and 30 days intervals. Tap anywhere on the "last 24 hours" graph, you can see the detail activity list.
If you want to see the bandwidth usages of a single device, just locate the device from the device list, tap the device -> "Network Flows".
Learn more about bandwidth graph
Bandwidth Usage Alarms
Worried about overusing your internet?
Learn more about Bandwidth Usage Monitoring
Better Network: Smart Queue
Advanced Smart Queue prioritizes traffic and reduces delays (buffer bloat) when your network is heavily loaded. You can now control your bandwidth usage by rate-limit any device or activity (such as video).
This feature is available for the Firewalla Gold and Blue Plus
Better Network: Policy Based Routing
Policy-Based Routing can be used to route any type of traffic to VPN Client, or to any WAN interface. This feature is useful if you want video traffic to go to VPN, or gaming on a lower latency network.
Learn more about Policy Based Routing
Manage your network 
Firewalla Gold can divide your network into physical partitions with dynamic and static policies/rules. These subnetworks can be used to give you better security and in some cases help you to speed up the network. Network Manager is only available on the Firewalla Gold.
Use cases for network segmentation include:
- Create a network segment for kids or employees with their own rules and policies. You can limit access to the internet, filter activities, and more.
- Isolate critical devices into their own network. For instance, only permit devices like security cameras to talk within their own network.
- Create a secure guest network, in order to apply high-level protection to your guests, and manage their activities in real-time.
Learn more about Network Manager
Network Segmentation Usecases
Example: How to Segment Guest Network with VLAN
Multi-WAN for better performance and availability
Defend your network
Open Ports
Firewalla can detect any UDP or TCP ports on your router that are open to the world. On the main UI of Firewalla Box, tap the open ports button, it will show you all the ports that are reachable from the internet. If you are not sure what the open port is for, Firewalla can help you to block it.
Learn more about Open ports
If Firewalla detects any port opened by the UPnP protocol, an Open Port Alarm will be triggered.
How to handle Open Ports Alarms
Rules
With Geo-IP Filtering, you can block any country, or any region in the world to prevent hackers from attacking your family and business. This feature is only available on the Firewalla Blue.
Learn more about Geo-IP Filtering
The Active Protect feature is enabled by default, it creates Active Protect rules in the rules list. Active Protect rules are dynamic, Firewalla actively monitors and detects suspicious connections 24x7, and automatically block the connections that are very sure to be "bad".
Learn more about Active Protect
Firewalla also includes many sophisticated ways to manipulate the network. You can apply rules to an individual device or globally to all devices, to control internet access by IP, domain or activity type.
Learn more about Rules
Security Alarm
Firewalla monitors your network and alarms you when detecting malicious activity vulnerabilities. Alarm detail helps you to make a decision on whether you should block a site for future access.
Learn more about Alarms
Parental and activity control
Whether you are at home managing kid's internet access or at work managing employee activities, we want you to have complete visibility and control. The control can be applied to a specific device or globally to all devices.
Parenting with Ease
Firewalla integrates with the capability of keeping adult or offensive content out of the search results, works with Google, Youtube, Bing, and Duckduckgo.
Learn more about Safe Search
Family Protect helps you automatically block adult and offensive content on any device.
Learn more about Family Protect
Firewalla is committed to taking back family time from social networks. The “Social Hour” feature blocks all social networks for one-hour increments, giving you more time to spend with family.
Activity Block
You can create blocking rules by different categories of activity, including social networking, video, gaming, porn, gambling, and p2p.
Learn more about Rules
Scheduling Block
The active time of a blocking rule can be scheduled to be active during a certain period in every day or certain days throughout every week. For example, to prevent your kids from scrolling through Facebook late at night, you can block a device's from accessing Facebook every night from 9 PM to 7 AM(next day).
Learn more about Scheduling Rules
Activity Alarm
Firewalla can also alarm you when people are playing games, watching videos or porn. These alarms are enabled by default. If you don’t want to receive a certain type of alarm, you can mute it from alarm settings.
Tune the Alarm Settings
Privacy Protect
Say Goodbye to Annoying Ads
The Ad block feature supported by the Firewalla box will block ads for both web pages and mobile Apps.
Learn more about Ad Block
DNS Over HTTPS
Use DNS over HTTPS feature to secure and encrypt your DNS lookups.
Learn more about DNS over HTTPS
Make Your Privacy a Priority with VPN
If you are outside and on a public network, Firewalla VPN Server, allows you to tunnel back home. It hides (encrypts) your traffic and gives you the same level of security protection while on the go.
Learn more about Firewalla VPN Server
If you want to hide your IP location and data from your ISP, you can use the Firewalla VPN Client. (You will need to have your own VPN Server account.) The client allows you to tunnel traffic from any device on your network (even those that can not install VPN software) to a remote location.
Learn more about VPN Client
For your convenience
Firewalla includes a free DDNS service, which you can use to locate your home IP address dynamically.
Learn more about DDNS
If you have multiple Firewalla box installed, you can rename the box to something that can be easily identified.
Rename Firewalla Box
One app can manage many Firewalla's and one Firewalla can be managed by multiple phones. Here is how:
Add another Phone to Firewalla
Support using the local domain to access your devices instead of IP address.
Device Domain usage example
For Power Users
The Firewalla Web interface is to complement (not replace) the mobile app. This interface is currently in beta. The interface officially supports Firewalla Blue and Firewalla Gold.
How to Access the Web Interface
Troubleshooting
Running into trouble with Firewalla? We can help! The following articles will help you solve most common problems you might run into.
Troubleshooting While Running Firewalla
Videos
If you like video tutorials, they are available on YouTube.
Community
- Important Announcements
- Facebook Page (lots of discussions there)
- Youtube
- FAQ
From our Founders
Cybersecurity never starts with technology. It always starts with you. And, awareness is the best way to defend against cyber threats.
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