Show us your “lifestyle” Firewalla Contest
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CONTEST WINNERS ANNOUNCEMENT:
Here’s a big congratulations to the final three winners picked by our team and with some help from the community.
- Winners will be contacted individually about their prizes.
- We will also officially announce the winners via our weekly newsletter!
Thank you everyone who participated! The Firewalla Team loved seeing all your setups and pictures.
First Place: C0pernicus - https://help.firewalla.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/24294588856083/comments/24381853883027
Second Place: Steven Smith - https://help.firewalla.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/24294588856083/comments/24298693452691
Third Place: Eric Nunes - https://help.firewalla.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/24294588856083/comments/24445854363667
*Updated January 29, 2024
As we enter into 2024, we want to see interesting, polished lifestyle photos of your boxes in action! Where is your Firewalla currently set up? What makes it different from the rest?
- A "lifestyle photo" for products refers to neat looking product images that showcases the product in a real-life context or setting, often with the goal of conveying how the product can fit into different use cases.
- Winners will be selected based on presentation.
Entering in our contest is as simple as snapping a good picture and posting it below as a comment! (please login to post) If you're trying to enter the contest from your mobile device: you may need to request the desktop version of this site to see the option to add an image to your post.
The Prize:
- One Grand place winner will win a Firewalla Gold SE + Gold Rack Mount + Wifi SD
- 2 Runner up winners will win a Firewalla Purple SE
We will be picking winners to feature in our promotional content. Your photo may end up being featured on the product page of firewalla.com!
Timing
- We will accept submissions from now until Sunday, Jan 14th, 2024 (last day to submit).
- Winners will be announced 5 days after the submission period ends and will be contacted via email.
Entering:
- Submissions must have at least one Firewalla box in order to be considered.
- Although not necessary to have in order to win, submissions with a Wifi SD or Gold Rack Mount will receive an extra point.
- We encourage all types of UNIQUE setups to apply.
- A small paragraph explaining the “uniqueness of the setup” will be helpful.
Winner Selection:
- The Firewalla team will vote and select the top 3 entries - one grand place winner and two runner up winners
- Promotional content includes: emails, Firewalla articles, product pages
Important: Please do not post any sensitive information. Firewalla is not responsible for any submissions in this forum and the content in the posts. Firewalla reserves the right to remove any submissions that are unoriginal or offensive.
By entering a submission in the contest, you agree to allow Firewalla INC to use your photos in any future marketing materials. By posting/voting here, you will automatically sign up for the Firewalla weekly newsletter.
(We will periodically remove unoriginal or offensive submissions from the comment section)
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Network closet...literally!
My setup needs to be lean & mean as my network cable is dropped into a 2' x 4' network box behind my pants in the closet. The setup includes:
- Firewalla gold
- Raspberry Pi gathering metrics
- Crypto miner
- TP-Link Omada controller, switch and WAPs (spread around house)
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My home office space is where my Firewalla lives, mounted to the front of a rack ups with plenty of air flow to keep it cool. I have it paired with a UDMP in bridge mode, serving 3 vlans, 10 AP's and around 100 devices at any time, and it has been working great. The UDMP is connected to gigabit fiber, from there i have my work devices connected directly, and the Firewalla used in bridge mode to 2 additional switches. The Firewalla stands out with the ability to keep the kids safe in their own group and segregate the IOT and guest vlans from the default lan for security. After dialing in the kids access, I could not be more happy with my Firewalla purchase, the only regret is not going ahead and getting the gold.
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I have a purple SE, with the LAN into a switch. There are 3 computers wired to the switch. My work computer, my other work computer (it's complicated), and a raspberry PI running a jelly fin server.
I have the other work computer and the PI on a separate VLAN to keep them segregated. I SSH to manage the PI (only exposed over local network).
I have a whole bunch of devices connected to the firewalla VPN, which is awesome.
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For my small-ish size 1BR apartment, I centeralized all my networking and media equipment in my media console, all wired with ethernet for reliability and secured with my Firewalla Gold. All that's missing from this photo is the NAS (recently added). I was very excited when I realized my apartment was wired with ethernet, as it allowed me to have an ethernet connection in my bedroom for my desktop and have my Sonos speakers all wired (way more reliable for connecting via AirPlay).
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Unwrapping the Chaos: Even Santa's elves need a little Firewalla magic to tidy up this networking workshop! 🎅🔗🧝♂️
#GnomeNetworkCleanup #FestiveFirewalla #SantaApprovedSecurity
We just bought our first house six months ago, and I was ecstatic that the builder had an upgrade option for a networking panel. I pulled the trigger on my first Firewalla purple after positive recommendations from friends and have not been disappointed since then.
Nothing too fancy here, just a few MikroTik switches that send PoE to two Ubiquity wireless access points (first floor and second floor). Firewalla purple set up as my gateway out to the ISP. I've been slowly segmenting my IoT devices from other network devices over the past few months. I have plans to migrate my compute/apps environment into a server cabinet in the garage in the future and will likely put another Firewalla downstream from this one in the server cabinet to further segment.
Can't say nothing but good things about this firewall. So many features and I'm only using a handful of them. Steady updates and more new features. If something happens to this box, I will buy another one, no questions asked.
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year!
-MO
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This is my primary rack under my desk in my office that supports the main floor in my house. I have two FWG+ here. The first FWG+ supports my main home networks and is connected to my Fiber ONT and wired to a Verizon Wireless LTE modem for WAN backup. I run it on Alpha and Beta release from Firewalla at times. The second FWG+ is connected to the primary FWG+ as the primary WAN and is connected to the Verizon Wireless LTE modem via the WiFiSD and runs only on the latest GA software. I have this for redundancy as I work from home and in the event of an issue on my primary network my work devices are further isolated and I could physically connect my work network directly to the ONT and bypass the primary network.
This is my basement rack. It has my old FWG in it. Its connected to the Primary network on its own vLAN as it's WAN connection. I run it exclusively on Firewalla Alpha releases and all the TP-Link stuff on their Betas. I use it and the attached devices to test things now before I do them to the primary network, but it mostly exists because it can and I had the extra "hand me down" equipment to build it out and can play with it with my latest round of network upgrades up stairs. This rack also support my primary network in the basement and to APs outside and on the second floor.
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My setup in Brooklyn, NY. A small Brooklyn apartment has necessitated some creative placement on a TV stand, hence most of my setup is out of view. The Firewalla Gold sits beneath my TV and behind the soundbar and next to a Sonos Port. The modem, access point (ASUS ZenWiFi Pro AXE11000), Netgear 8 port switch, and NAS remain out of view and elsewhere on the TV stand or nearby.
The Firewalla WiFi SD acts as a failover to my phone's hotspot, should the primary WAN go down. Working from home has made the WiFi SD a crucial addition to the Firewalla Gold. The antenna is usually folded down during normal operation and is only pointed up during failover operation.
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My Firewalla Gold is at the heart of my network here in Australia. With a wife and three teenage kids constantly streaming, tiktok-ing and gaming, I love that Firewalla is easy to manage by phone while I'm away so I don't get any Netflix sev-1s! Love the ad blocker and auto-quarantine of new devices! My Firewallla hosting segments for desktops, IOT and DMZ plus uses encrypted DNS for privacy.
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Here 'tis, in all its glory. On top of the drinks fridge in the garage. 🤣
I have a wallmount rack. I genuinely do. One of these days I'll bolt the thing to the wall and put everything up there. But until then...
edit:
Ayyyyy I did a thing! I've taken some measurements for the switch and the Firewalla, and will be designing and 3D printing some custom rackmounts for their respective RUs. because right now they slide around a little when I close the door and these shelves don't have holes you can zip tie through (I'm not that keen on drilling them out just now).Everyone else is elaborating, maybe I should too - This is just a home network for a young family. I'm not currently labbing anything on this particular network, but I do have a smart house environment that I am wanting to restructure properly.
I was previously running a full Eero mesh setup, however I find them very limiting in the sense that you can't broadcast more than one normal SSID, and there's zero VLAN support. Yes there's a guest SSID but that's completely segregated from the normal. And I must have missed the sales pitch where they say you need to pay $170AUD annually to do basic stuff like parental filtering. I gave that a shot for a year, didn't enjoy the cost for the payoff and unsubscribed, instead trying to use Pihole on that silver and black boxed Pi in the first pic - but no matter what I tried I kept running into problems with legitimate websites just not loading properly. So rather than pay that subscription over and over, I spent whatever was necessary to save money and opted to buy the Firewalla Purple. Firewalla's management is so much more intuitive than Eero, and I have found it so much easier to set up groups and apply content filter restrictions to each. Quick disabling the rules is also more seamlessly functional compared to the Eero system, I was forever having to full reboot user devices to get them to function correctly after a rule change on the network platform. When I get some more spare time I'm going to play with the VPN settings too, I have a Gl.iNet Slate AX router that comes with me when I travel for work, and I'd really like to try using Wireguard to establish a VPN tunnel between that router and the Firewalla so I can stay fully connected inside my own network when on the road.Circling back, right now the Eeros are just running in bridge mode, as they more than adequately cover the house for signal strength. And for all their drawbacks I actually really like the way they are all identical and their dual gigabit ports on the back can be turned into remote wired connections - perfect for someone like me who's home office is at the back of the house in relation to this internet termination, and has so far done everything possible to avoid running network cabling in the roof. Right now I have a 4 bay Synology NAS running off one of the other Eeros in my home office like this (mostly out necessity of keeping the box with bright flashy lights and big power button on the front away from tiny human hands), though with this cabinet finally on the wall I think I will relocate that over here. Keen eyes would spot 4 AP patches there - that panel is actually just a pass-through panel and that single patch neatly goes into the Eero up top - but the intention is to remove the Eeros entirely and replace with some TP-Link wifi 6 AP's on the ceiling, and to reduce the amount of times I need to get up into the roof I've some Cat6A on the way - I'll be running dual patches to both locations to ensure future upgrades aren't hampered by structured cables technology. At least not for the immediate future anyway.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk. :)
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Here is my home networking rack with a Firewalla Purple and a Cisco managed switch to manage various VLANs segmenting traffic away from each other (wireless, wired, office) in addition to groups on the Firewalla to restrict access to the internet (IoT, kid devices) regardless of the medium they connect through. Would love to get a Firewalla Gold in the future so that I can use the Purple when traveling.
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I am currently a Cybersecurity Student and have been playing with networking and servers for a few years before I decided to start schooling. I have a 42u Rack in the house as my lab. I have ATT Fiber going to Gold and then the other 3 ports going to the edge switch and then going to the other switches for stuff in the house, 2 Unifi APs, and servers. I have a Proxmox cluster running a few different things, NAS, and a server that is about to get started as a storage server for the Proxmox cluster. Getting ready to move houses and will be redoing the rack and putting the gold rack on top above the edge. Used short cables to make it look cleaner. Also, label all the wires on the patch and the wires behind the patch. I have a second rack that has not been built out yet but working on it, if I would win I would use the second gold for my hacking lab. Ethically, of course.
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Just installed my new Firewalla Gold Rack Mount a few weeks ago. When I did that, I also upgraded my access points to the new Eero Pro 6E and a 2.5G switch that is mounted in the Firewalla Gold Rack Mount. Everything is hardwired. All I am missing now for an entire 2.5G backbone is either the Firewalla Gold Plus or Firewalla Gold SE. :) My next step is to experiment with VLANs and get the Firewalla WiFi SD to work as a failover off of my phone‘s hotspot when my internet is down. My setup also has a Homebridge server and Synology DiskStation server.
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Love my Firewalla Gold!
Managed here is a rack mounted Firewalla Gold SE with Firewalla Wi-Fi SD for backup WAN via cellular hotspot. We have separate networks for Business, Public WiFi and Internet of Things. My only regret… not installing keystone jacks and following better cable management practices from the get-go. Found this perfect opportunity to better cable manage and make for a better visual appearance. The USB keystones and USB extensions are top notch for moving the USB pieces to the front of the rack mount. I love having the firewall management access available to me in the palm of my hand over my mobile. I would like to see a future windows app to access over a windows pc or internet browser.
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Taking a pic of my network rack wouldn't give full appreciation for how I'm using my Firewalla Purple.
We own a vacation home (as pictured with my Purple added over the top) that we have incorporated a number of "smart" elements. However, having guests come in and out of the home, we don't really want them having access via the network to the "smart" elements. With our Purple we created the following groups and rules:
- Internet Only - Any device placed in this group only has internet access to specified locations and NO LAN access.
- LAN Only - Any device placed in this group cannot access the internet, but only other LAN devices that have been specified.
- Internet & LAN - Rarely used, but on occasion you may have a smart device that needs to talk to another on the LAN, but also to a cloud service. This group allows LAN communication only to specified devices and Internet access only to the specified locations.
- Host - This is for me! When I am there, I need to administer and interact with my smart devices in a way that one of our guests would never need.
- Guests - This is for the guests that visit us and is the default group for any new devices that join (modified quarantine)! They get internet access and casting to the TV, and that's it!
Without the Purple, this would have been very complicated and expensive to setup! Now we have guests from all of the world visit us, and we have no concern about them getting into devices they shouldn't be! Granted I know there is more I could/should be doing, especially on the LAN side of things, but this setup takes care of what I estimate to be 99.99% of issues I'd have otherwise!
#BaptismByFirewalla
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I have been running a Ubiquiti UniFi setup for a number of years and have always been dismayed at the poor performance of the USG-Pro Security Gateway I have as my router. You can't run it with DPI unless you are willing to accept a maximum of 250Mbps throughout at the WAN. Thia was ok when my WAN was only 100Mbps, but having recently (and finally) been given the open for a Fibre connection to home (Australia is surprisingly hopeless when it comes to high speed internet), I moved straight to a 1000Mbps plan, and that ruled out using the USG-Pro.
Around the same time this was happening, the Firewalla Gold SE Early Release came up, so early in 2023 I pre-ordered the Gold SE, and later I added the Rack Mount as well.
The main thing I wanted from the Firewalla is control over what my kids can do on the Internet without affecting anything else. This was near impossible with the USG-Pro, but the Firewalla has been a revelation.I am currently running the Firewalla in Transparent Bridge mode, so it goes USG-Pro -> Firewalla -> Switch.
On the Firewalla I have created Groups for all the various devices around the house, and put each of the kids devices into their own Group. I then set up a Schedule for each child so that it blocks the Internet completely when they are supposed to be in bed, and I have also permanently blocked content they shouldn't see.
On shared devices around the house (Apple TV, Smart TVs etc) I have simply restricted them by the room they are in, and Amazon Devices like the kids Echo Dot Clocks have their own group so my kids can still listen to music and set their alarm without the ability to bypass the restrictions on their other devices.
The kids thought they would be smart and try to bypass the blocks by using a previously unused device, and they were not happy when they found that all unknown devices go straight into the Quarantine Group with no access.
Next steps for me is to remove the USG-Pro from the setup and put the Firewalla into Router mode. I am on holidays this January and the kids are off school for Summer, so I can tinker with the network without too many issues.
The main things I want to address is Network Segmentation, putting Guests, IoT and Residents all onto separate VLANs. I have also been looking at adding UniFi Cameras and Video Doorbell to my setup, so that will be next on the list.
My Network setup is all located in my Garage in a Comms Cabinet, with all wiring in the house coming back to this central location via Cat6a cable. I am running UnFi APs for faultless WiFi Access, and key rooms in the house have an abundance of PoE Cat6a ports available for hardwired access. There is a dual exhaust fan in the rack which is connected to a temperature controller, so a soon as it gets above room temp in the cabinet, the fans come on.
The Firewalla Gold SE has been rack mounted right below the existing USG-Pro, and with a simple swap of the WAN cable from the Fibre NTD, I can remove the USG from the network. It's place the rack would most likely then be taken by the UniFi NVR, and the currently blank slots in patch panel are where the keystone jacks for the IP Cameras would go.
This is a neat setup with the added security that the cabinet is keyed and the kids can't bypass the system. Having everything out of the way and out of sight means that the internet is just like any other utility in the house. It's always on and just works. There's no ugly box with antennae sticking out in all directions, and I never have to reboot anything because it just works.
The Firewalla has been the final piece in the jigsaw for me as both my kids are now at the age when they are pushing the boundaries, so it gives me piece of mind that on my Network at least, I can control everything they do.
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There are two Firewalla Purples running at our digs. The top Purple is attached to our IoT network which has Home Assistant running on a VM on a Synology NAS. It keeps an eye on our Home Assistant gadgets along with miscellaneous items such as our Kindles. The bottom unit is watching over the non IoT side of things. Both units have been doing a great job of monitoring the two networks. Really appreciate how easy they were to set up.
Edit... I forgot to mention that I have set up rules to block certain countries. We have a couple of IoT devices that keep trying to phone home to China and our Purple keeps them from connecting. They run perfectly, but they are contained. Also turned on the new device quarantine which is a great feature as we live in an urban setting surrounded by other flats and countless other wifi networks.
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My home network is housed in the TV stand in the Living Room. There are two compartments (with glass doors) that each have a shelf dividing the space into four areas.
My network has evolved throughout the years and had become quite unruly. A few weeks ago I decided to clean it up to make it easier to service and to improve airflow. I cut some pegboard the appropriate size and painted it black so it would not stand out. In the photos, it looks gray, but that is because I used so much lighting for the photos. I zip-tied everything down to the pegboard and swapped out many of the patch cables for Monoprice Slimrun cables in shorter lengths.
All my networking gear is Unifi except for my Firewalla Gold. I like having everything in the same ecosystem for ease of use and maintenance. I started out with a Unifi Dream Machine (not pro), but the Firewalla provided better capabilities that were easier to implement, so I switched. And I am glad I did, no regrets.
The 1st photo shows my Firewalla Gold, HD Homerun TV tuner, intake fan, and Flex mini switch. In the compartment above this (not shown) I have a Synology NAS that runs Channels DVR Server. These two compartments share the same airspace. There is an exhaust fan in the upper compartment, so the air comes in at the bottom and exits out the top. After installing the two fans, my NAS's hard drives run about 8 degrees cooler (now 89 degrees).
The 2nd photo shows my Caseta Wireless hub, Hue hub, Aqara hub, and another Flex mini switch. Rather than run all my cables back to a larger switch, I have most devices plugged into a switch in their compartment that then feeds back to the main switch. This mini and the one in the 1st photo are POE powered from the Unifi POE switch in the 3rd photo to simplify power management.
The 3rd photo shows my Unifi Cloudkey Gen 2+, the Unifi 8 port POE switch, Apple TV, and two Raspberry Pi 4s (one runs Homebridge and the other one runs Scrypted) to bring non Homekit compatible hardware into Homekit.
Not shown is a Uifi Flex (not mini) in the attic that feeds 2 APs and soon another camera to be mounted in the eve facing the driveway.
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The backbone of my networks are secured in a utility room of my home. I have stud mounted my Firewalla Gold with Firewalla Wi-Fi SD for backup WAN. I haven't needed to failover to the backup wan over cellular yet but it has tested and proved to work wonderfully. I have network segregation for managing separately my home network from guest network, work and internet of things. I like how easy it us to access and manage everything. It's very user friendly and I always recommend firewalla to anyone looking to secure their network, gain visibility to what's flowing in or out of their connections or simply to just add parental controls or monitoring functionality.
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Here is my setup. I use a Firewalla Purple that is using my fiber connection as primary and then it uses the purples wifi connection to connect wirelessly to my backup cable modem. From there it goes to to an Omada switch and finally to the Decco AP's. We live in a large concrete walled house and this gives us the option to have both advanced networking features and good wifi coverage. We also have everything connected to an Ecoflo River Max as the power down here in Mexico isnt the greatest.
We have had very consistent uptime since moving to this setup. I also love the fact that I can have my work computer on its own VLAN with a dedicated VPN that runs on the Firewalla and I do not have to connect it every time from the computer itself.
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My network runs from a couple of enclosures on the Master walk-in-closet where only my wife and I have access to it.
My setup needed to be as clean as possible because the place where is located, so between the enclosures and a small square furniture, everything seems to be organized.
The network setup includes:
- Firewalla Gold
- Supporting 5 VLANS (Home, Work, Kid, IOT & 2 LABs) and OpenVPN (soon to turn it off and leave only WireGuard on). Many FW rules, routing rules, Smart queue rules, DNS rules.
- TP-link POE Injector to power a TP-Link EAP-650 (supporting VLANS)
- Spectrum Modem (Second Frontier Modem will be added later this month for multi-WAN)
- TP-LINK (TL-SG1016PE) Easy Smart Managed to managed VLANS running across the house for ethernet ports.
- 2 Raspberry Pi
- Rpi 3B+ running Home Assistant
- Rpi 5 running Ubuntu Server with docker.
- Dockers: Portainer, Omada Controller, AdGuard, JupyterLAB.
- Omada Controller used for Hotspot management where I issue vouchers for my kid (Internet rewards) :D
- AdGuard for LAB DNS
- JupyterLAB for some python scripts to gather some data
- Dockers: Portainer, Omada Controller, AdGuard, JupyterLAB.
The cables running out the picture goes to:
- CCTV system
- Battery backup (Spectrum modem, Firewalla, Raspberry Pi (Home Assistant) and POE injector for Access Point connected)
- 2 Intel NUC (for LAB purposes)
- Proxmox (running Linux based machines)
- VMware (running a NAS and Windows based machines)
Looking forward either to add a Firewalla Purple SE or event better a Firewalla Gold SE, the Gold Rack Mount and a Wifi SD!
Here you have a picture:
- Firewalla Gold
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My Firewalla Gold is perfect for running my general home, IoT smart home and home lab networks. I have access to my network from anywhere using the secure VPN feature. I also use Ad blocking, DNS over HTTPS, DHCP plus several other features.
The amount of control I have through a simple but intuitive user interface is amazing. One of the biggest features are the insights. The Firewalla keeps me informed of network health, and threat analysis.
Insights such as, live throughput, data usage, network flow rules are informative and easy to read. Alarms reporting provide insights on treats and activities such as Large Bandwidth Usage, Port scan Activity, Malicious site access and auto blocked external attacks etc. It's great to know the family and I are being protected.
One of biggest draw cards for me are no subscription required and updates are free. Firewalla also provide great documentation and how to guides. There’s also a fantastic active community to reach out to for questions and to assist if you get stuck.
My Firewalla is the heart of my network and with the company’s active development providing new features and updates I know I’m covered now and into the future.
Amazing.
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Hi Firewalla Team! and community!
Edited: To add some photos after I reoriented my setup.
This is my setup so far. I am moving to a server rack shortly but until then, this is my lifestyle shot!
The best thing to happen to my network was Firewalla Gold SE and a rack mount is just what I'm after.
If I won first prize I would put the new Gold SE in my family's house so they could also benefit from the awesomeness that is firewalla!
What you cannot see in this photo is all my Ubiquity AP's and other POE switches around the house.
My Server dashboard also has the Firewalla MSP running so I can always see my stats.
The PC is my homelab server with over 50TB of storage. 32GB Ram, Ryzen 5. I also have gigabit fibre.
Good Luck everyone!
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My New Firewalla Gold SE. I just got this for XMAS. It is nice and compact. Works great on my desk. I wish I would of known about this product a long time ago. Probably would of saved me some headaches. I can now see all the traffic going in and out of my home network.
Good Luck everyone in the contest.
Home network closet. Firewalla supporting 4 vlans. 1x lan, 1x hosting/services, 1x iot, 1x wifi. Routing through a managed switch
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