What are the differences between the Mini Appliance and PC Engines APU4d4

Hardware
1

Hello,

I understand that the Mini Appliance is based on the APU4d4 but has undergone some modifications. Can anyone describe those modifications or what the differences are?

I don’t need 4 x NICs and so was looking at the APU2e4 as it has 3 x NICs and uses what I understand are slightly better i210AT NICs. I am intending to just configure RED and GREEN interfaces, as I plan to to run my internal network entirely from a managed switch, including my UniFi APs. I am a home user so don’t have any public facing equipment that would require an ORANGE interface.

Also, I want to establish three or four VLANs inside my network and I understand that this is easier to do from a managed switch, vice trying to configure them from the firewall with a maximum of one VLAN per NIC within IPFire.

I am very new to this and have yet to purchase any hardware. I haven’t used IPFire or any other firewall OS (I am also considering OPNSense) so my comments above may be incorrect.

Thank you.

2

This is an old post of mine, however, I’m still wondering what the differences are between the Mini Appliance and APU4d4.

Also, is this wiki page on the difficulties of installing IPFire on APU2e4 still accurate now that the Linux kernel has been updated to 5.10? Also, I’m still under the impression that the i210 is a better NIC than the i211.

Thanks, John