Firewalla Purple (Inter-VLAN Routing)

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Nester

• September 30, 2025 11:26

Hi everyone,

I’m using a Firewalla Purple in transparent mode. Everything works great until I try to separate devices into different VLANs.

When two devices are on different VLANs (for example, a laptop in VLAN10 and a NAS in VLAN20), the download speed drops to around 7–10 MB/s, which is basically 100Mb. I tested both over Wi-Fi and wired connections and the results are very similar.

If I remove my Firewalla Purple from the network topology, speeds go back to normal and max out at 1Gb.

My question is: is this simply a performance limitation of the Purple (meaning I’d need to move to a Gold model), or could this be caused by a misconfiguration on my side?

Thanks in advance for any insights!

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  Firewalla

  • October 01, 2025 16:09

  I'd check the ethernet connections on the Purple and make sure they are Gigabit instead 100Mbit. 

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  Nester

  • October 02, 2025 07:55

  Unfortunately, that was the first thing I checked. I also performed a reset of my Firewalla Purple and disabled almost all of its features during the initial setup, but this had no effect on the issue.

  If the devices (my test laptop and NAS) are placed in the same VLAN, the problem disappears and the speed returns to normal.

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  Firewalla

  • October 02, 2025 16:04

  Is the problem VLAN to VLAN local traffic? is there anything between the VLAN's? like a switch?

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  Nester

  • October 03, 2025 07:13

  Yes, the problem only occurs with traffic between different VLANs. My devices are connected to the same L2 switch and Firewalla Purple is placed between my router and this switch.

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  Firewalla

  • October 03, 2025 16:12

   

  Since you are using bridge mode, all traffic flows through the firewalla, the routing VLAN to VLAN part is done by your router. So it is pretty rare (unless you have a port negotiation problem, which you don't) to have firewalla slowing down. 

  I'd double check your running router first. If you can't find anything, try to use the purple in router mode and see if you still have performance problems. 

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