Firewalla Gold in the wild

I have a Firewalla Gold along with several other brands of switches and APs. Essentially upon buying a FWG and having the VLAN and advanced (and super easy to use) cyber features available,  set out to build myself a more secure network at home. As a family we work virtually and attend school virtually and have for almost 2 years now. We're lucky enough to have fibre optics run right into our home so latency and bandwidth aren't a problem. We've found a 50Mbps up/down connection to be adequate for our virtual work and school, the streaming that we do (TV shows and movies), video calls with family all who live elsewhere in Canada and other home and work virtual activities like online work training. 

I wanted to showcase what I've implemented in the Firewalla product (collage pic). The VLAN configuration, Ad blocking, Secure DNS over HTTPS, rate limiting/traffic priority, Family Protect/Safe Search and Quarantine features are all in full use to name a few. The VPN server also keeps us cyber safe when connecting while mobile, particularly using unsecured wifi or through cellular service.

I have included a simplistic network diagram that show the various VLANs and switches. The segmentation possible thanks to Firewalla has allowed me to move IOT devices, like home automation plugs, switches, and sensors, CCTV cameras, and other devices onto their own network. Using the mDNS reflector capability allows devices where needed to find and make use of IOT devices. Our home portion of the network is reserved for laptops, desktops, tablets, e-readers and the like. Our WorkNet segment only contains work machines given that our employer's network use policies allow for a certain level of monitoring and surveillance, I moved these devices and isolated them completely from the rest of the home networks. I could at some point add in a guest network if the need arises. Everything operates great across 1Gb over ethernet without any complaints from anyone even when we're all online with video streaming. Super performance for what we need!

The wiring and setup is a big on the messy side but it's in the basement in a utility room and the wiring has a door that when closed nobody see and other than me want to know about.

And last but certainly NOT least is the Firewalla Gold in-line from the Fibre Optics termination onto my home network. The FWG replaced the ISP hub/router entirely as it support VLANs on the WAN side as well. It's connected essentially directly on the Internet and routes traffic to and from my home network - no delay and very little added latency.

All battery backed up and terminated to this point either through wired connection to VLAN-enabled switches, or wireless PoE WiFi AP supporting VLANs. There are a couple of other controllers and a central back-up drive for desktop devices as well.

Firewalla is a great investment - it saves time in configuration, saves bandwidth costs by cutting out the unwanted network traffic (like ads), and increases our cyber security!