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Firewalla starts taking preorders for 2.5Gbps Gold Plus firewall
I've been experimenting with Firewalla firewalls since the launch of the original Blue model, but for the last two months, I've been using the Firewalla Gold as my network's main router.
I finally made the switch for a number of reasons, one of which was the fact that Firewalla has a Wi-Fi SD option that allows you to use your phone's hotspot capability as a backup connection for your home internet. If you ask my coworkers, my internet service used to break down constantly. Since switching to Gold and adding the Wi-Fi SD option, my internet connection has been perfect.
And now that I've started traveling for work again, I've been taking the Firewalla Purple with me to connect to hotel Wi-Fi and keep my devices secure.
Also: The high price of free Wi-Fi: Never connect to an insecure network
But there's a problem with my current home setup -- my internet plan offers speeds up to 1,200Mbs, but the Firewalla Gold maxes out at 1,000Mbps. And while the current connection speed is more than fast enough for my family of five, if I'm paying for speed, I should be able to use it. Right?
One way to make that happen would be to upgrade my cable modem to one that supports link aggregation and combines two ports on the modem and the Gold to create a faster connection. The other is something the Firewalla just announced -- the Firewalla Gold Plus.
It's the company's first 2.5Gbps firewall and it's currently available for preorder. The presale price is $569. The full retail price after the preorder period is over has yet to be announced, but in the past the discount for preorders has been fairly significant.
Preorders are currently scheduled to start shipping between Dec. 12 of this year and Jan. 21, 2023. According to related Reddit posts, generally the more preorders Firewalla receives, the further up the shipping estimate moves. The company, however, hasn't said how many orders are required to make a significant impact on shipping time.
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As for the Firewalla Gold Plus feature set, the firewall comes with four 2.5Gbps ethernet ports, 4GB of memory and 5-gigabit deep packet inspection.
In addition to meeting some users' at-home internet speeds, the Firewalla Gold Plus has all of the same features as previous Firewalla firewalls.
That includes the ability to monitor your internet traffic for cyberattacks, insights into how you're using your bandwidth, broad controls over which kind of content can and can't be viewed, and ad-blocking, and it doubles as a VPN server so you can easily connect to your home network.
Also: The best 5 VPN services: Performance, security and more
I don't know many people with home internet connections over 1Gbps, so I suspect that early adopters of the Firewalla Gold Plus will surely be small businesses that want to boost the security of their office network. And then as more time passes and home internet speeds continue to slowly increase, devices like the Firewalla Gold Plus will surely become more attractive to small business and home users alike.