Firewalla Purple Review: Network Magic

Should you’ve ever been pissed off by the dearth of options and settings in your ISP-supplied router, a Firewalla might be what you want. It’s a small field that would exchange your router utterly and provides the safety of a sensible firewall, in-depth parental controls, additional privateness and many extra.

To be clear, the Firewalla Purple isn’t actually a Wi-Fi router: it’s designed for use alongside a mesh Wi-Fi system, an entry level or your present router’s Wi-Fi.

It’s quite a bit just like the now-defunct Bitdefender Field and Norton Safe Core routers which have been aimed on the extra tech-savvy gadget fanatic who needs to see and management what occurs on their community.

Though it could appear costly, there are not any month-to-month or annual charges to pay – one thing that would have put individuals off Norton and Bitdefender’s routers (and nonetheless does with fairly just a few present routers and mesh Wi-Fi programs). It implies that the Firewalla Purple is significantly better worth than it initially seems to be.

The Firewalla Purple can be for anybody apprehensive concerning the safety of good house units as a result of it permits you to see precisely what they’re as much as in addition to having the ability to hold all of them on a separate community out of your telephones, computer systems and different units.

Options & modes

• 2x Gigabit Ethernet ports
• Brief-range Wi-Fi
• Transportable

You would possibly assume from its tiny dimensions that the Firewalla Purple isn’t very succesful, however you’d be unsuitable. Very unsuitable.

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It’s a formidable field of tips that offers you lots of perception into what’s really occurring with all of your units and a great deal of management over their entry to your community and the web.

In reality, there are options right here that the majority house customers merely received’t know what to do with all of them, however in case you’re ready to study VLANs and different networking strategies, you will get quite a bit out of it.

The field itself has a pair of Gigabit Ethernet ports, one for WAN and one for LAN. There are numerous choices for a way you’d join it to your present router, modem and mesh Wi-Fi however it works greatest in case you set it up in router mode and join the WAN port to your modem and the LAN port to your mesh Wi-Fi or your present router (however set that to bridge mode).

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Nonetheless, if that’s not doable – otherwise you don’t have a mesh Wi-Fi system – you possibly can set the Firewalla to Clear Bridge Mode or Easy / DHCP mode. You’ll lose some options although, equivalent to VPN, good queue and policy-based routing in case you go for Bridge mode.

Putting in the Firewalla takes mere minutes, and it comes with an Ethernet cable, USB-C cable and energy provide – all the pieces you want. However in case you’re ordering from exterior the USA, you’ll want to purchase the Common Energy Adapter or provide your individual that delivers no less than 7-9W.

There’s a USB 2.0 port, however that’s at present not used for something. On the entrance is a microSD slot, however whereas you need to use this so as to add options to the Firewalla utilizing Docker containers, that’s not one thing many house customers are more likely to perceive or need to do.

The built-in Wi-Fi is meant to be a backup in case your primary Wi-Fi goes down, and helps solely a small variety of units at pretty shut vary. Enabling it requires a visit to the assistance part of Firewalla’s web site as a result of it’s removed from apparent that you should create a brand new community, selecting Wi-Fi after which choosing an SSID and password.

This Wi-Fi can be helpful in case you needed to take the Purple travelling and use it in a resort room, for instance.

Firewalla doesn’t make solely the ‘Purple’. Its hottest mannequin is the Gold, which has 4 Gigabit ports and is able to inspecting community visitors at over 3Gbps, the place the Purple is proscribed to 1Gbps. However there are many different fashions, together with the cheaper Purple SE and Blue Plus and the model new – on the time of this overview – Gold SE which is a barely cut-down Gold Plus with two, versus 4, 2.5Gbps ports.

Firewalla

Nonetheless, the Purple would be the candy spot for most individuals as a result of it’s quite a bit cheaper than the Gold, but nonetheless has just about all of the options house customers would need. Go any cheaper and also you begin to lose beneficial options equivalent to routing, Wi-Fi and others. Should you’re involved that you simply want extra LAN ports, merely purchase an affordable, unmanaged Gigabit change.

Firewalla app and notifications

• iOS and Android
• Internet portal
• Largely straightforward to make use of

You want a cellphone and the Firewalla app to configure the gadget, which begins by scanning a QR code on its underside as a safety measure to show it’s yours.

The app is pretty straightforward to make use of, however you’ll want no less than a primary understanding of networking and which mode to make use of from the get-go.

As soon as arrange, you’ll start to get a barrage of notifications within the app concerning the discovery of recent units and what they’re as much as.

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It will rapidly get annoying, as a result of default “alarms” embody {that a} sure gadget is watching video, taking part in video games or has an “irregular add”. You’ll must resolve which “alarms” you need to learn about, configure what constitutes an irregular add, or put up along with your cellphone pinging a whole lot of occasions a day.

To start with, although, it’s wonderful having the ability to see that your safety digital camera simply uploaded 400MB of information to a server within the Netherlands or that your baby is taking part in Roblox after they’re imagined to be doing their homework. Shortcuts allow you to block web entry – or pause the alarm for an hour.

On the app’s house display screen you get an summary your community: what number of units are related, how a lot information has been uploaded and downloaded within the final hour or 24 hours and a stay graph of present add and downloads.

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A bar on the high reveals your community efficiency. Mine was completely inexperienced for the entire time I examined the Firewalla, a very good factor, but when there are any issues it would present different colors. You possibly can faucet it to get extra particulars, equivalent to the whole outage time, quantity of packet loss and max. latency.

At this level I found just a few issues. First, none of my Amazon Echos have been working and neither have been lots of my good lights. Even though they have been nonetheless connecting to the identical Wi-Fi community, they’d misplaced their web connections.

It turned out this was simply mounted by energy biking every one, and certain right down to the truth that the Firewalla was utilizing a distinct IP tackle vary to the router it changed. Some units might deal with this alteration and not using a reboot, whereas the others merely couldn’t.

The larger problem was that my BT TV web channels stopped working. BT is cagey about precisely how a router must be arrange for these and says clients should use their Good Hub 2 in an effort to watch them, refusing to help every other {hardware}.

Regardless of a prolonged dialog with somebody from Firewalla’s tech help group, I wasn’t in a position to get them working with out the Good Hub 2 on the community. And since it doesn’t have an choice to set it to bridge mode, this meant compromising and never working the Purple in router mode.

Nonetheless, typically, it is best to be capable of ditch your ISP router and exchange it with the Purple. Simply do not forget that in case you do this, you’ll want a mesh Wi-Fi system or one other approach of offering Wi-Fi in your house.

Units & guidelines

• Guidelines enable full management over particular person units or teams
• Good for controlling children’ units

As with routers and mesh programs that present you which ones units are in your community, it is going to be a battle to work out what’s what from the producer, gadget title, IP tackle and MAC tackle, particularly if – like me – you’ve got a lot of units. Firewalla recommends ready a few hours, although, as a result of the data can enhance over time.

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I discovered it was doable to establish some units, however it actually relies upon upon the package you personal and you probably have multiples of something. I’ve fairly just a few Amazon Echo audio system and Hearth TVs which all seem equivalent to one another (they’re not known as ‘Echo Dot 5’ and ‘Hearth TV Stick 4K’), and the identical is true for Philips Hue and different good lights.

Understanding what’s what is simply vital if you wish to management web entry, although, so it’s not essential to call every gentle.

It is very important do this in case you needed to group collectively all of the units every of your children has entry to, for instance. You can then construct a gaggle of their cellphone, pill, laptop computer and good TV and create guidelines for after they’re allowed to make use of them.

Should you can’t establish a tool from the Firewalla app, you’d want to search out its MAC tackle after which discover it within the app which, fortunately, you are able to do by trying to find the primary few characters.

One other approach to simply establish units is by switching all of them off prior to installing the Firewalla Purple after which turning them on one after the other and naming them as soon as they’re found.

It’s sensible to have the ability to block apps, both to particular units or teams of units. There are shortcuts to dam YouTube, TikTok and Fb, however there are extra within the App Management checklist equivalent to Roblox, Instagram and Snapchat.

You possibly can block apps not within the checklist by discovering their ‘flows’. Flows are one of many key methods the Firewalla works. Basically it’s a collection of communications between two units (equivalent to an iPad and the Netflix server), and you’ll often establish which app a circulation pertains to utilizing the urls you see within the checklist as they have a tendency to include the corporate’s title.

It’s additionally how the Firewalla is ready to provide you with a warning that “Jason’s iPad is taking part in Roblox” or “Kitchen TV is watching Netflix”.

You’ll see the whole variety of each day flows on the house display screen, in addition to what number of have been blocked (as a result of that is, in spite of everything, a firewall).

Guidelines are one other key idea for Firewalla. You possibly can create them manually, however others are created robotically whenever you allow options. For instance, there’s Household Shield (internet filtering to dam dangerous or inappropriate web sites) and Protected Search (to stop the identical issues showing in search outcomes).

If you allow these, you could select which units and / or teams they apply to. Deciding on units and saving that checklist creates a rule, one which is simple to edit or disable in a while.

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Tapping on a person gadget brings up a display screen with shortcuts to rapidly block actions equivalent to social media, video, gaming and porn. As talked about, it’s also possible to block web completely, though do not forget that all of those apply solely to the gadget’s Wi-Fi connection.

A toddler – or anybody – with a cellphone might simply circumvent the restrictions by turning off Wi-Fi and utilizing cell information as an alternative. And that’s why it’s nonetheless price utilizing parental controls on the gadget itself, equivalent to Apple’s Display screen Time or Google’s Household Hyperlink.

The opposite cause these apps are higher is as a result of Firewalla’s Household Shield internet filtering merely makes use of the freely accessible OpenDNS FamilyShield service which you would configure on any outdated router. The filtering isn’t configurable in any respect, so that is one function that’s disappointing.

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Scroll additional and also you’ll see details about the gadget: its pleasant title (which you’ll edit), its IP tackle, MAC tackle and whether or not it’s on-line or not. You possibly can select to get alerts when it comes on-line, in addition to when it goes offline.

Each could be helpful relying upon the gadget. The latter may give you a heads up that there’s an issue with a safety digital camera, and the previous might inform you that somebody has arrived house as a result of their cellphone has reconnected to Wi-Fi.

Past this you are able to do issues equivalent to blocking particular domains (and domains with wildcards, IP addresses (and subnets), block issues primarily based on areas and areas, block particular ports. And on high of that, you possibly can schedule all the pieces and add exceptions to your blocking guidelines. Phew.

Different options

• Good Queus – QoS
• Advert blocking
• Quarantine

The Firewalls can do much more. There’s a helpful Wi-Fi velocity take a look at that allows you to see what velocity you’re getting in numerous rooms, or in your backyard, and an web velocity take a look at that measures the add and obtain speeds your broadband is supplying you with.

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If in case you have a metered connection, equivalent to in case you’re utilizing the Firewalla on vacation or a enterprise journey and hotspotting out of your cellphone, you possibly can set alarms to warn you when information utilization hits a sure determine.

One other function is advert blocking. This works by blocking at a DNS stage as an alternative of searching for adverts on webpages or in apps. As with a number of different options, you need to allow this and select which units it applies to.

And like internet filtering, it’s not an ideal system. I discovered that some adverts nonetheless made it to my screens whereas others didn’t. I additionally discovered that it – or one of many household security options – precipitated an issue the place I couldn’t faucet on any hyperlink in Google purchasing outcomes: the Firewalla merely blocked all of them.

Firewalla explains that that is more likely to be the case on its web site: “Firewalla’s Advert Block is quite a bit weaker than most of the desktop variations of Advert Block. Sure, we acknowledge that. Right here is the rationale: in an effort to block adverts extra successfully, an advert blocker must entry your information stream and manipulate unencrypted information. Firewalla by design won’t ever ever have a look at your information, and can solely have a look at metadata. That’s why Firewalla will solely block sure kinds of adverts, not all. Due to this, Firewalla can’t block YouTube adverts. We nonetheless effectively block adverts from well-known advert websites.”

It’s additionally why there’s the choice to set the advert blocker to default or strict. Default received’t block as many adverts, but additionally causes the fewest issues. Strict does the other, and is actually designed for the kind of people that can deal with fixing it when issues break due to it.

Good Queue is a QoS function that means that you can prioritise sure actions, apps or community flows in order that, for instance, downloading Name of Obligation doesn’t stop you from taking part in an internet sport on the identical time.

Quarantine received’t grant web entry to any new gadget till you say it may.

The Firewalla Purple additionally supplies cyber safety in your units. Lively Shield is one safety function which is on by default and “blocks all excessive threat community actions”. I by no means seen this kicking in, however I did depart it in Default fairly than Strict mode.

It’s going to additionally block web sites recognized to be malicious by default, however it would additionally block others if it detects any recognized malware on them.

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Don’t take into account this a substitute for antivirus software program in your PC and cellphone because it doesn’t stop malware from being downloaded, particularly in case you select to permit entry to that website.

It’s price mentioning, too, that the remainder of your family received’t see any alerts or warnings on their units: they’re solely despatched to cellphone(s) which have the Firewalla app.

Plus, just like the Bitdefender Field and different safety routers, the Firewalla will assist to guard all units in your community from assaults even when they’ll’t run antivirus software program, equivalent to your safety cameras, video doorbell and good audio system.

Even now, I’ve barely scratched the floor of what the Firewalla Purple is able to. Nonetheless, a lot of the different options are in all probability past most house customers’ comprehension. And it’s vital to notice that though there’s a VPN, it’s not what you would possibly assume.

It’s designed to will let you use it from exterior your private home community. For instance, in case you’re sat in an airport overseas on free public Wi-Fi, you need to use this to connect with the web by way of your Firewalla and get the identical safety and safety you’ll as in case you have been utilizing your cellphone at house.

Should you did need to configure the VPN so units on your private home community join by way of a VPN server (to unblock Netflix, say) you’d nonetheless want a subscription to NordVPN or one other supplier.

Worth & availability

The Firewalla Purple prices $369 direct from Firewalla.

Should you’re not within the US, you’ll nonetheless should order it from Firewalla’s web site and import it to your nation.

For these within the UK the bottom worth is about £290, however you’d want so as to add £10 for delivery, 20% VAT and any import charges, making the actual worth round £375.

These costs are, in fact, lower than what you’d pay for a Gold – $485 or roughly £485 together with all import charges.

Since Bitdefender and Norton not promote their safety routers, there actually aren’t any apparent rivals geared toward customers – no less than nothing that gives the options accessible within the Firewalla Purple with no ongoing subscription.

Verdict

There’s no denying that the Firewalla Purple isn’t for everybody. It’s extra user-friendly than, say, an enterprise firewall, and has an ideal app. But it surely is a sophisticated gadget with superior options that even technophiles would possibly discover baffling.

Should you’re solely going to make use of a fraction of what the Purple is able to doing, then it’s laborious to advocate spending the cash: an honest mesh Wi-Fi system ought to have a very good few of the Purple’s options, and a few even bundle them into an excellent friendlier app (Eero’s involves thoughts).

The wonder right here is that there’s a lot extra energy on supply in case you’re ready to, for instance, be taught to arrange VLANs so solely sure units can speak to one another, or the web.

Plus, not like Eero and others, Firewalla doesn’t demand you pay a subscription to make use of its options: you pay handsomely for the gadget, however it’s then yours to make use of and hold.

Finally, if you need visibility into what’s occurring in your community, you need the kind of management over your units (or your children’ units) that unusual routers merely don’t provide you with and also you need the additional safety that the Purple supplies from malware and hackers (and advert blocking, too) it’s straightforward to advocate. Let’s simply hope it turns into extra extensively accessible so it’s higher worth exterior the US.