This compact and incredibly powerful appliance is built to deliver lightning-fast performance and security. Whether for your home network or small business, it’s the perfect choice for reliable firewall protection.
Key Features:
New Generation: Built to take full advantage of the latest features.
High Performance: Designed to handle even the most demanding network workloads.
Compact & Efficient: A small footprint and low power consumption make it ideal for any environment.
Special Offer: Pre-order now and enjoy an exclusive price of 499 EUR (excl. VAT) or US$ 599 until December 31st!
The appliance will begin shipping in November, so don’t miss out on this limited-time offer! Head over to our store to secure yours today:
They are Intel’s V-226 NICs. They are quite great and have lots of offloading features.
Yes, I have a WiFi 7 module here that is working great in my test version. However, I need to write some more code for this to work, so I assume we are launching this early next year.
Congratulations to all Ligthing Wire Labs for this new product. It’s a substantial improvement and provides an updated approach for SMB environments, starting from 2.5GBe, currently close to a “default”, due to increasing FTTH connections availability.
The product do not want to be cheap, that’s understandable: source of mainboard, CPU and peripherals should provide updates (microcodes, bios, drivers) and long term supported devices are at premium price, more in current times of higher inflation. It also must be reliable long term hopefully more than 5 years.
It’s unfortunate to not see SFP+ connection, for at least 1 zone adapter (or more, via VLANS) 10gbe support, with the curent standard price tag. Probably has been a choice, due to insufficient computational power to handle 10GBe connection (as stated in the page ~2.4 GBit/s firewall capability).
Baloon PSU connection to the box is a nice and appreciated touch, and seeing the power requirements, probably a PoE-powered device could be possible. Who knows, a possible option in the next iteration.
Anyway.
Some hints for a different approach for the forecoming presentations.
0: datasheet available on the website at post for all versions. At the time of this post for all versions (which is one with a different power cable) deliver a nice 500 error.
1: an understandable “key features” list… or simply not provide that at all, due to the constantly changing of firewall features due to the evolution of IPFire; Mini Appliance have the features that Ipfire provide.
2: add a comprehensive and detailed hardware/spec list, avoding unneccessary lookup on Intel ARK for Celeron J6412, which currently is my suspect for the embedded CPU on board. https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/214758/intel-celeron-processor-j6412-1-5m-cache-up-to-2-60-ghz.html
Compared to the older Mini Appliance, according with CPUBenchmark, seem a 5-6x increase in computational power https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/4474vs5050/Intel-Celeron-J6412-vs-AMD-GX-412TC-SOC
but my evaluation might be a little overstated due to continuos discover of speculative execution flaws, which could further reduce the advantage coming from a 6 years younger architecture. Lighting Wire Labs declares roughly more than 2x computational power (fireperf goes from ~940 mbps to ~2.4gbps).
Last but not least: i find a little odd that the two necessary connections for a KVM are on the opposite side of the box. At least is small, so should be no issue at all with proper cables allowing a stable connection.
Thank you. I agree. It is going to be a great step forward.
I personally have not seem so many 2.5 GBit/s networks, because at least my customers go up from 1 to 10, or more. We have a few 100 GBit/s appliances out now which is a lot of fun…
I think the product is cheap, but of course only within reason. We don’t like to make bad compromises, because then there is very little point in having our own line of appliances in the first place. What we chose is something that is solid, fast, and will be supported for years.
There is lots of posts where people bought hardware for very cheap money from some retailer in China and you can read how unhappy they are with that.
Our IPFire Mini Appliance is supposed to last and not bring your business down because of some corners that the manufacturer cut.
We had zero enquiries about SFP+ ports on the small appliances. In the larger versions they are pretty much standard, but now in the small world. So I think this appliance is perfectly suitable for 99% of the people as it is. Otherwise I know that people get a modem with a RJ45 port if their ISP is bringing fibre right all the way to their demise.
10 GBit/s is a problem in this form factor. There will be way more power consumption and heat and that will make the product very expensive - especially for those who don’t need this.
It is impossible to cover all use cases in just one device, but we don’t have to. There are other appliances available that come with 10 GBit/s network interfaces by default.
Oops, I seem to have broken that late yesterday. It is fixed now and you can download the data sheet from the product page on the store.
It however does not have any more information than what there is on the website.
I intend to keep the product page as short as possible. I think people who are looking at buying an IPFire appliance already know IPFire and its features. Otherwise I will be copy & pasting a lot of text…
Yes, that matches roughly what we have tested so far. The CPU power alone is however not what makes this one super fast.
This is literally the theoretical maximum of one NIC. I just try to show that we can actually use the capabilities of the hardware which is not very often true for this kind of product. I shall not say names.
Other people would advertise a product like this with speeds of up to 23.4 GBit/s. Great, but that is literally made up and a very constructed metric. I am interested in giving people an idea of what the firewall can actually put through from one interface to another.
Yes, but that is how it keeps its small form-factor
@ms i must second the question.
It’s not reported on the product page, it’s not reported in the (supposed, due to lacking information) “datasheet”.
Cisco has been bashed by you quite hard for “lack of transparency” about the software… So reporting most data possible at least on the datasheet of the product should be standard for Ligthining Wire Labs.
I mean… it’s not asking for the OEM who realized it (which was PCengines for previous mini appliance)…
For several years. In the end that will depend on many factors.
There is everything on the data sheet that we found was important to our customers to vet the product. For anything that isn’t on there, we are happy to answer questions.
That “DC +54V” connector next to the ethernet ports looks interesting. Can this appliance provide PoE power by any chance? I think that would be super useful for running a wired access point!
Yes, in theory it can. It does not have a built-in power supply for this, but an external one can be connected to send some power out through the network interfaces.
I have not tested this because I didn’t expect this being an interesting feature for our customers.
I scrolled up and the only one I found was @pike_it guessing that it might be the Celeron J6412 in post #4. He and Terry asked in posts 6 and 7, but I never saw confirmation. Is it the J6412?
For on demand designed and produced devices, with some interesting tweaks and acts for avoiding to share the component used (a lot of brands scratch out the markings and identification signs from the chip… if the customer/company is big enough could also avoid the printout or laser marking)… yes. I mean… Nintendo asked Sharp specific markings on the CPU of Gameboy.
However… according to what shared, this is a well picked and tested computer board, with shared details about configuration like storage tipology and size, the same about the ram, network cards. Have also a display output.
I mean… could be a PC…. Or better. Actually its is a x64 personal computer, full fledged with specific form factor. The only thing missing into datasheet is the precise model of the CPU.
If you buy a computer without verify the details about CPU, Ram capacity and speed, storage capacity and speed, chipset, network cards, slots, weight, warranty and so… go for it.
I don’t., and while I think I’m not the most common PC buyer, I’m still not a snowflake…
IMVHO the new IPfire Mini Appliance is a precisely picked, evaluated, tested, vetted and verified computer that suits your distro and you’re willing to stand by with warranty.
Share the configuration is… simply faster than answering to this marketing post about preorders.
I marked the words “Quad-Core Intel Celeron Processor (Elkhart Lake) @ 2 GHz” did a right click and choose Search Duck Duck Go for “…” and get the CPU number “J6412” in the first result.
Please tell me the CPU number of this router and to make it easier look here They tell nothing about the CPU inside, only marketing with features over features.
I don’t understand your criticism.
Unless you want to point out that too much information is given to make a replica possible.
@ms Ever thought about a portable version, as a 4G or eventually 5G modem router, with battery operation?
Special Offer: Pre-order now and enjoy an exclusive price of 499 EUR (excl. VAT) or US$ 599 until December 31st!
