Firewalla Software: Bring Your Own Hardware
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- Firewalla Software licensing will be subscription only.
- x86 support at launch only.
- Dual Port only
- Bridge / Router mode
- Virtual machine support (depends on the survey)
This is a feasibility study only.
If you are interested, please complete the survey: https://forms.gle/znJ1RbdSAo3r6QuL6
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This would be amazing! Sent the feedback in. I wouldn't put hard caps on the amount of ports. Just licence the software and let users be in full control. I suppose we could use switches though. I have had my Gold SE for what must be close to 3/4 years and love it. The amount of people who I personally know would snap up this software from firewalla and the msp onto a Zimaboard 1 or 2 is 20 plus! Love the constant updates!
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Would love to see this, especially if it supports multiple port configurations because then we can tailor the hardware to our needs. Like getting a box with 6 2.5GE ports, or one with 2-4 2.5GE and 2 10GE (SFP+ or Ethernet).
I’d think installation could just include a script that detects the network ports and prompts the user. Depending on what network manager you use, it should automatically name/number them and you can just assign a custom name to them on initial configuration and then use those names throughout the rest of the UI. You just need a config file that the rest of the system can refer to for rendering the various UIs.
You already do it to an extent with the VPN interfaces, so most of the logic should already be in place.
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We will have the Firewalla Crystal SE, which supports one WAN and bridges all other ports to the LAN (also supports VLAN).
If you want more port complexity, such as multiple WAN and multiple per-port LAN, you have to wait for the Crystal Pro, likely early 2027.
The problem is that once the port number increases, the problem of identifying which is port 1,2,3,4 gets more complex. That will require a lot more creative labeling or hardware profile support.
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I would not be interested in a product with a subscription license. What happens when I decide not to renew subscription? Do features disable themselves? Just security and feature updates stop coming? Either way I dont like the model.
I would much prefer a one time purchase license that was tied to the hardware it is activated on, and the purchaser gets version updates as long as they run it. But the license is permanently tied to that hardware and so a new license needs to be purchased should someone choose to upgrade their router down the line with new hardware to make it more powerful.
This shouldnt put too much long term strain on Firewalla as I understand you need to keep revenue flowing in to stay alive as a company and provide updates. But it lets the end user have peace of mind that they dont have these ongoing costs just to use their router.
Edit: And maybe have an "Upgrade License" that is like $20-30 or something if someone wanted to change out their NIC only and this allows the end user to re-apply the license again without purchasing a whole new one when all they want to change is a NIC with a new model. The use case for this would be if someone was just using the built in 1gb ports on a motherboard originally and wanted to add in a dedicated NIC, or perhaps a 10gb NIC or something. This license would only be for allowing a NIC change and would check the other hardware IDs to make sure they matched the original configuration the main license was for. Allowing a bit of flexibility in network connectivity for the end user.
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It is pretty hard to have licensing attach to hardware we don't own. I don't think any of our competitors are doing something like that. At least for the initial phase, we will just follow what others are doing in the same industry. We may get creative in the future with licensing, for now, we need to get things working first.
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