TLDR; I don’t think I will buy it if it is not sold by Lightning Wire Labs GmbH.
5 Likes
nice unboxing 
and:
thank you for the now available documentation. 
maybe you can post the link to the real manual:
https://www.lannerinc.com/support/download-center/user-manuals/category/16-network-appliances?download=618%3Anca-1040se-user-manual
from your review to the topic:
https://community.ipfire.org/t/launching-our-new-ipfire-mini-appliance-available-for-pre-order-now/13022/
until today it is just a blackbox there 
Thank you for that review. I am please to hear that you are happy with our product.
I would like to add some context to some of these things, if you are interested:
- For the packaging we are trying to be as environmentally friendly as possible. Of course all components are being made in Asia and we sell this product all across the world which means a lot of miles in the air. Therefore we don’t have any glossy packaging, but I double-layered sturdy carton which should be hard to smash. To protect the valuable contents we are using some plant based chips that are made out of starch. They are ultra lightweight and compostable and since we started using them, we never had a damaged delivery. And you all know how your delivery guys are treating the parcels. There are bits of the plastics and in case of the IPFire Mini Appliance a plastic bag just in case the parcel gets wet.
- Regarding the power supply, we have reviewed various benchmarks and have contacted people in the industry and there seems to be pretty much no difference between different suppliers.
- The serial cable is something that we are throwing in for probably more our enterprise customers that are used to administer their network equipment using serial consoles. I know, we all have loads of them, but they all have different pin layouts, so we want to be rather safe than sorry.
- Storage over NVMe would have been nice indeed, but since the firewall is never writing any large amounts of data a couple of hundreds of megabyte/s peak read and write performance is absolutely fine. The board only comes with SATA.
- Memory/Storage configuration: This is a very difficult question as there is no right answer. We try to find a middle ground and that is why we have configured this model with 8 GB of RAM and a 128 GB SSD. That is more than plenty even for hardcore users. The appliance is indeed fast enough to host a couple of virtual machines, but that is something I would consider outside of the average use case. You are however welcome to upgrade your appliance if you wish to do so. Nothing is soldered on and as you have shown, all components are easily accessible without opening the entire case.
- Cooling in this one is GREAT! Try to run a burn-in test and you will see that it never actually goes hot. Feeling the case heat up at the top is a sign how well the heatsink is working taking the energy away from the SoC. Don’t put a stack of books on the appliance and you won’t have to worry about any of this at all.
Thanks again for the review and your feedback!
5 Likes
Ligthining wire labs are not consumer-oriented products, closer to SMB rather than prosumer. As enterprise/tech support level, serial connection is day-to-day, accepting to pay premium for reliable or without chip-clones USB to serial adapters. On a day to day use for other segment, it’s simply one more cable desinated to ewaste.
I appreciate and respect the “better safe than sorry” approach, but with RS232 connector is simply no use.
I stumbled accross DSD Tech SH-RJ45A cable/adapter. I can understand than 16 EUR MSRP price can not be easily subsidized, however Lightning Wire Labs could consider add this kind of accessory as an addon or… provide it from the webstore?
USB-A is going to be gone laptop space in 5 years…
IMO the bold part of your quote is mostly relevant, here, adding to the dialog informations from the “missing data in the datasheet”…
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/214758/intel-celeron-processor-j6412-1-5m-cache-up-to-2-60-ghz/specifications.html
Max # of PCI Express 3.0 Lanes **8**
It’s easy to assume that board designer/producer does not care that much for storage, delivering the lanes to 2.5gbe adapters.
Prices of consumer grade flash storage, 128gb
25 euro NVMe
12 euro SATA 2.5" board/drive
70 euro for B-Key SATA-board.
SATA is legacy/yesterday and b-key boards will cost more and more in the future, due also to lack of competitors. Don’t get me wrong: realiable, power efficient and heat-resistant flash storage don’t come cheap. Also, due to lower speeds required from both controller and flash chip on the storage board, it’s safe to assume that the heat will be far less on the B-key board rather than NVMe. I mean… 600mb/s compared to 1200 (closer to 2200) mb/s peak transfer rate… allowing to not require heat dissipation of the storage and lowering the heat quantity to be managed by the box.
When (not if) flash storage will fail… access to a “cheap restart option” instead of waiting 10-15 business days shipment could be a huge difference.
–edit—
I’m not impling that delivered storage board is low quality or short life.
Lightning wire labs, as any reseller, would not deliver low life products nor replace parts outside failure.
I assume that the storage flash choice was made to fullfill the budget necessity while delivering an adequate lifespan for the market tier that the device is pursuing.
The delivered storage board has 0-70°C as operating temperature, it’s classified as “industrial” from the brand which unfortunately do not deliver TBW or MTBF into publicly available datasheet.
… and as a company you picked the most compelling quote?
AFAIK Delta and FSP are most of times among best considered.
Neverthless, twist-locking barrel jack is undoubtely a choice that i stand by: it’s close to the best possible.
Last but not least: packaging.
I know I’m talking about another kind of company and product, but Apple delivers 1000 EUR devices into the smallest package possible, I’d say that shipment savings are the biggest part of this thin layered paperboard boxes.
This kind of packaging tells the customer “we care for your money”, and environmentaly friendly is a win win option (lower expenses for the waste recycle embedded into product cost).
Neverthless, I hope that a rework of the package could occur, for saving both space and consumer money.
Like marketing, packaging to not filter packets.
From the actual board/box brand
Rackmount/Wallmount (Optional Kit)
I’d like to know if LWL is considering the option for the future.
This is not entirely accurate. It depends a little bit on the product. I highly doubt that anyone has use for the appliances that have 100 Gbit interfaces at home. It would likely be a waste of electricity. The IPFire Mini Appliance is however designed for the home - primarily the home office, but it is perfect for home users who need the functionality of IPFire, too. If you are totally happy with the router your ISP sent you, then nothing of this is right for you.
I personally use the serial console at home because I don’t have a screen with HDMI or display port available. Serial always works for me.
This is a total can of worms that we could open here. Yes, USB-A is out of date, but USB-C isn’t there, yet. DisplayPort is not a big thing, but people who have a server rack somewhere still likely use VGA and not HDMI. We simply don’t have enough space to make everyone happy on the hardware and it is not our fault that there is such a zoo of different standards and plugs and sockets. I am used to carry a bag full of adapters that I luckily barely need, but I need to have anyways.
I mean, look at the device. It is a network device. It does not have any space for any additional storage devices and simply isn’t designed as such.
Once again, we are in the firewall business here. Things are slightly more conservative, because we need reliability. Having the latest stuff isn’t normally what we are looking for.
In the entire history of us marketing appliances, we did not have a single broken SSD within warranty. We even have not been replacing anything for a customer outside of warranty. Customers have replaced hardware at the end of their lifetime because even our devices don’t last for eternity, but storage was not the reason.
Yes, we obviously have price pressure on the IPFire Mini Appliance because it is our cheapest one. We want to make it easy for everyone to migrate over to IPFire and having good and affordable hardware available is essential for that. However, we don’t focus on price only. None of the components are “consumer-grade”, but at least have a label like “industrial” or “enterprise-grade”. There is no regulated specification for these, so we have to trust the vendors that they are selling us something that is durable, but that is why we are choosing components that have proven a great track records to us in the past.
I thought this was obvious 
There is a minimum size of box our supplier can make and we have to make enough space for DHL labels and export documents, too. In case of one IPFire Mini Appliance there is space for a second one.
If there is demand for it, we can of course stock this.
2 Likes
I’d say “user case for 100gb interfaces at home is really niche”.
You’re the sample size of one, as me.
I can share my experience and preferences, but I can’t assume that what always work for me is the best for the rest of the wolrd.
One size does not fit for all, no matter what appareal brand says.
For the interface war… VGA is consumer out of market since at least three years. No laptop delivers that anymore, HDMI is the only interface. However hardware KVM have ports specific , and no one is going to spend 3000 EUR or more for replace the KVM for fancier DP, even for PS2 is cheaper buying adapters than replacing. New KVM is only for new racks.
USB-A is anyway the most commonly available and RS232 is simply disappeared. For the bag full of adapters… you’re the sample size of one. Again.
On a network device you would install a firmware. On this device LWL is installing a linux distro.
On a network device is hardly upgrade/replace storage, or upgrade RAM. Some of them have Brand™ Exclusive™ compliant accessories for any computationaor storage upgrade. On this device DDR4 SODIMMS and B-key storage boards can be installed
I think “PC” still is the best fit here.
I think that you’re description is quite rough on the edges.
For storage: NVMe is dated 2011 as spec, but roots are NVMHCI, which is dated 2008.
Still newer than SATA (2000) but the 3.2 version of the protocol is 2013, which adds NGFF connector support. SATA 3.2 is the stated supported version of the storage brand.
Sorry… latest word is uncomfortable to read, here.
Neverthless I must congratulate you and the rest of LWL for the 0% faulty storage in your history (within warranty), great manager decisions delivered well.
About reliability…
I don’t think you’re ever impling that NVMe flash storage is less reliable than SATA flash storage.
Because still supporting SATA express, in server space NVMe is close to the only option used for flash storage, with U.2, U.3 connectors and E.1(s) E.3(s) form factor. And yes, hardware fails, must take for granted, Probably in the enterprise sector the replacement cycle is shorter than networking? I’m unconfortable to assume that.
Neverthless…
About reliability the storage brand in this LWL box did not delivered on the website or accessible datasheet any statistic/promise about TBW, MTBF, DWPD. Probably it’s outside of the scope of that particular product rated “Industrial SSD”.
I picked 8 other product lines among Industrial SSD, no statistic about reliability delivered.
I’m in no condition to say that these devices will have issues. But there are no statements…
That is why I said that it works for me. I am saying it is the right way for everybody else. We are just giving people options here.
Thank you.
No, that was not necessarily about the hardware. I assume the actual flash is very similar. I was rather thinking about controllers, drivers and these things. We had to put in a lot of work to make IPFire ready for NVMe, these things take time, testing and need to mature.
Even if vendors would publish these things, I am not sure I would believe them. That is why we have a different approach…
3 Likes
- Cooling in this one is GREAT! Try to run a burn-in test and you will see that it never actually goes hot. Feeling the case heat up at the top is a sign how well the heatsink is working taking the energy away from the SoC. Don’t put a stack of books on the appliance and you won’t have to worry about any of this at all.
I didn’t run a burn-in test, for its longevity I will add a fan for it later. Check the temperature in idle and memtest, I would say it’s average. Customizing the new IPFire Mini Appliance | by Song Tang | Feb, 2025 | Medium
I will agree with Michael here. I have an IPFire that has all but two services running:
IPS runs on RED, GREEN and OVPN. There are 37 rule groups active across 5 rulesets. DHCP typically has around 80 users, along with 8 fixed leases. With 8GB of RAM, the firewall typically only uses 60% of that, leaving 40% free.
Storage requirements are minimal for IPFire. Only about 4GB of my 64GB mSATA storage is used. Its speed far exceeds any of my network bandwidths and it has never been a bottleneck for IPFire.
Of course, if you’re going to try to use the appliance for something it wasn’t intended for, then you might have a different experience.
You can check that with “sensors” on the console.
[root@fw01 ~]# sensors
coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Package id 0: +58.0°C (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 0: +58.0°C (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 1: +58.0°C (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 2: +58.0°C (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 3: +58.0°C (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Usually our appliances are rack-mounted and therefore being designed to be in an air-conditioned server space. The IPFire Mini Appliance is obviously an exception. It is designed to run in an office or someone’s house.
In those you won’t always have the perfect conditions that you will have in a data center, but this is perfectly fine to run even in the summer at >= 30°C. I have done so myself. Obviously don’t put it into direct sunlight and make sure there is a bit of air going around the device - this applies to any electrical device.
And that you can feel the case getting warmer is a sign of the cooling actually working because it is taking the heat away from the SoC and bringing it to the outside. If it wouldn’t get warm, then you would have a problem.
Maybe not primarily designed, but definitely intended. Why not have a couple of mods around for the people who have some extra requirements outside of the mainstream?
Thanks, was going to find the command to check the temp.
Core temp with ambient temperature at 21:
`
[root@ipfw ~]# sensors
coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Package id 0: +59.0°C (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 0: +57.0°C (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 1: +57.0°C (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 2: +57.0°C (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
Core 3: +57.0°C (high = +105.0°C, crit = +105.0°C)
`
I am not distributing that it will keep working when the ambient temp reaches 30.
For passive cooling unit, I will always add a fan if the surface would reach 40 when idle, and this stops me from putting the unit in a place that has limited airflow.
For home uses, the environment varies a lot, it is subjective to the environment the device is sitting in.