Will there be a firewalla with 10gbe ports?

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    Andrew Mitchell

    In the US, most Fiber companies are now offering 5 and 10 GB Fiber (Ziply offers both in my area). I want to upgrade my 1 GB service, but the Gold Plus with only 4 2.5 ports really limits my use case to upgrading to the 2 GB plan. Yes, I can combine 2 of the 2.5’s into a single 5, but that limit the flexibility of the 4 ports. I will probably upgrade to the Gold Plus, and the next day what I want will be introduced. That’s always my luck.

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    Firewalla

    We did a survey a while back, not everyone is willing to pay high price for a 10gbit firewalla, so we are just waiting for the price to come down.

    May I ask if the interface coming to your home is coper (RJ45) or SFP?

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    T M

    My one is rj45 but the modem only has one 10gbe port so can't do link aggregation on the firewalla unless I place a 10gbe switch that supports link aggregation between my modem and firewalla so it can handle a higher that 2.5Gbe connection as the gold plus can handle upto 5Gbps.

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    Andrew Mitchell

    The 5 and 10 Gig ONT has a Fiber interface in an SFP connection and an RJ45 (10GB) port that I would plug into. That’s it just two ports. The 2 Gig service I haven’t seen the ONT for. The 1 gig service just has 4 gigabit ports but only one seems active, and an internal optical connection. Maybe they turn on a second for 2 Gig. I will call and try and find out.

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    Andrew Mitchell

    Ok I’ve ordered the 5 GB service with a single 10 GBE port and a Gold Plus. What is the easiest solution for bridging the two since no other devices will be plugged into the converter.

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    Firewalla

    You mean your 5Gbit service is SFP+? if it is, you may need a transceiver module. You also need to find out if the 10Gbit interface from your ISP support 2.5Gbit or not. 

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    Andrew Mitchell

    The back of the ONT (required) has a single 10 gig RJ-45. It does support 2.5, and 5 as well, but if I run 2.5 off of it to the Gold Plus, I'm loosing half my bandwidth. I need something that will take a 5 gig (or 10 gig) ethernet connection and split it into two 2.5 gig runs for link aggregation on the Gold Plus. There will be nothing other than these two devices plugged into it, so the simpler the better Then I second unit to go from the dual 2.5s to a single 5 OR  a switch that will take the dual 2.5 and aggregate them into a single channel from the gold. I'm running 5 gbe from there as I don't have the cabling to support 10 gbe yet. At this end I don't need more than one 5 gbe and a one gigabit connection, but I can obviously drop a switch in there if is only has a single output.

    The SFP connection is dedicated for the fiber in, and they don't support putting the SFP into your own equipment (yet).

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    Andrew Mitchell

    Oh, and I would have gone to 10 gigabit, but obviously Firewalla doesn't have anything supporting that yet. But when you do, I'm happy to upgrade.

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    Firewalla

    Will you pay say >1k dollars for a couple of 10g ports?

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    Andrew Mitchell

    On the Firewalla? I need to use language appropriate for the forums, but expletive YES. If it has the throughput to keep up with those ports, has the same functionality (like site to site, VPN, Purple as a remote, etc.), and gives me the same control I currently have, I could easily see shelling out $1500 for it. My hesitation with the Gold Plus is NOT the price, it’s that it doesn’t get me a significant upgrade over the gold. By loosing a couple ports to do the link aggregation, the only reason I was able to make it work was the support of the WiFi antenna as one more interface. I love the Firewalla. After going through multiple options over the years, I finally found one I don’t feel constrained by (and from a company that has been able to stick around for more than a year). With Docker containers, if you give me a high speed interface for attached storage, I’d pay even more (although I may be in the minority here).

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    Andrew Mitchell

    I’m already looking at two QNAP QSW-M2106R-2S2T just to hook the ONT to the Firewalla and the Firewalla to my house network. That is a bout $1000 on top of the price of a Gold Plus with Wireless Antenna. So yes, $1500 seems quite reasonable for what you mentioned.

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    T M

    I personally won't pay that much, firewalla is based of pfsense from what I read, but with a much better gui and app. My point being if you can build a pfsense 10gbe box for like 300 that is capable of doing ips/ids etc then the price is steep.

    I ended up with a dream machine se which can handle upto 3.5Gbps thoughput with FW turned on but had 10gbe wan port. Other options are asus 10gbe router etc..

    For me I would have also had to take into account shipping and import tax and duty which made it very expensive for the top end model.  With no EU/UK based distribution, if there was an issue then I would have had to ship it back to the US at my expense so the warranty or guantee is limited.

    Edit: it is not free, you paid for the product overall just like you do with other manufacturer like ubiquiti, asus which also have new features added without a subscription based model. 

     

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    1980cyber

    Anything around 1000, I'll pay for it. Maybe not just two sfp+, at least put some RJ45 on it.

    And for those comparing firewalla with another router ... you are seriously under value the software and also the free security intel that comes with the unit ... for FREE!!!

     

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    Andrew Mitchell

    Agreed. It’s nice not having to pay a subscription, I don’t mind paying a little more for the hardware as a result.

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    Andrew Mitchell

    And I’d still love a recommendation for the cheapest way to turn a 5 gbe port into dual 2.5’s to send to the Firewalla Gold, and then to turn the dual 2.5’s back into 5. I was thinking two QNAP QSW-M2108R-2C‘s. Yes they have options with fewer ports, but on Amazon at least they are more expensive. Over $900 just to utilize the throughput of the Gold Plus seems a bit high. I’d really rather stay with the Firewalla then say NETGEAR Armor.

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    Firewalla

    If more people are okay with 1k range for a 10gbit unit, then i can go and ask our sourcing people to look at CPU/board again and see if they can put something together 

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    Christopher Ferrante

    Maybe a firewalla with a PCIe slot that a 10gig card can be added to might be less expensive to produce?

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    T M

    Totally agree, that would be a good option to be able to upgrade with a compatible cards.

    I have a 1ltr lenovo tiny pc m920 with a pcie riser which I have dual port intel x550-t2 10gbe card and works fine. So, it is doable

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    Firewalla

    It is likely more expensive to have a PCIe card. The reason is the form factor will be a lot bigger than a normal unit, and once that happens, the price will go up ... and up. Unless you can find some used x550, the price is going to much higher than a fully integrated board

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    Firewalla

    Separate question, will you guys prefer

    two SFP+ running at 10Gbit and 1Gbit

    or two RJ45 running at 10/5/2.5/1 Gbit?

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    Christopher Ferrante

    If I had the option, the rj45 would be more flexible as a catch all solution - it would be my preference.

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    GamerZer0

    Yes... Two RJ45

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    Andrew Mitchell

    +1 to the two RJ45s. The SFP+ would be OK, but I’ll I’m going to do is by RJ45 adapters for it.

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    T M

    With sfp+ port you will then need to invest in rj45 to sfp+ (which cost over £50) adaptor which can be quite expensive. I have some already when testing my fibre cards.

    I also would like minimum 2 x rj45 ports.

    You can use marvell ac107 or ac113 10gbe controllers which are cheaper than the intels.

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    Peter T

    >$1K for 10Gig is fine. Trying to replace a USG-XG-8.

    Preference for two SFP+ running at 10Gbit and 1Gbit.

    I missed the survey somehow.

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    Firewalla

    Does your ISP use SFP+? From my understanding, all the popular ones are copper /RJ45-based interfaces coming into the house. 

     

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    Mike

    I have ziply fiber also. There are two ONTs offered, their 10Gbps plan is only available with an SFP+ ONT, while their 1/2/5Gbps plans use a Nokia ONT with only RJ45.

    My primary switch has both RJ45 and SFP+. I have the 2Gbps plan, so my ONT only has RJ45.

    It would be great to have at least 2 SFP+ ports. Offering 2 SFP+ and a 3rd RJ45 multi speed would give a lot of flexibility. Or, two SFP+/RJ45 combo ports, like many QNap switches offer.

    I would also be willing to pay ~1k+.

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    T M

    Just have it as 2 x Sfp+ 10gbe port and 2 x 10Gbe rj45 ports that would cover it for all.

    If you did release a firewalla wifi access point then you can make the port poe (that would provide the higher Internet availability on a Multigig wifi 7 ap) just to future proof.

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    Firewalla

    Unfortunately, we can't offer a mix of ports. Doing that will require two different 10 Gbit MAC, and they are extremely expensive to put on the board. It will likely go far beyond the 1k price. 

    (this is the reason, we are doing a poll on this on reddit and facebook)

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    Mike

    SFP+ would be the most flexible then (at least in my case)

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