Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Netgate 1100 with pfSense® Plus Software - Network Security Firewall Appliance and VPN Router, for Home Office and Remote Work

Top positive review

Very nice, albeit a bit memory starved

Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2020

The SG-1100 arrived in tamper-resistant packaging.

The pfSense software is luxurious when compared to OpenWRT. But, along with all the extra capabilities comes increased complexity.

When used with ad blocking software pfBlockerNG, there is enough RAM to work fine with relatively default parameters, but if you turn on additional block lists or the TLD option, you will quickly run out of RAM. I would like to see a 2GB version of the SG-1100.

17 people found this helpful

Top critical review

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Erik10206

Product info misleading, Not Gigabit despite what their product page says

Reviewed in the United States on July 19, 2019

Save yourself the hassle, if you have more than 500mbps of firewall traffic, this device will not work despite what the netgate product page says. Also, if you happen to find this out like I did, you will have to pay to return your device and then take a 25% hit on the cost. Safe to say that I will never purchase these overpriced and under spec hardware. I started an RMA through amazon and got almost to UPS before they told me all of this extra detail. Just be sure you want this device otherwise your going to be out $$.

119 people found this helpful

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From the United States

Erik10206

Product info misleading, Not Gigabit despite what their product page says

Reviewed in the United States on July 19, 2019

Verified Purchase

119 people found this helpful

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H. Vaughan

No support 1 month and no response from them!

Reviewed in the United States on April 9, 2020

Verified Purchase

Over a decade ago, I set up pfSense on a Soekris Net5501 by using an image on an SD card and connecting by a serial cable to configure everything. The hardware is getting old and I wanted a reliable replacement firewall.

Buying this from Netgate was a serious mistake.

I had configured my old firewall 100% on my own and it ran well for over a decade. When I made updates, there was no problem. When I got tied up with deaths in the family, moving, building a new house, and so on, for a number of years, that old pfSense firewall just kept chugging along, working perfectly.

I felt, after that long, it was time to update, but I didn't want to mess with putting an image on an SD card and dealing with a serial cable. I don't have the time I did in the past, so I ordered a simple box, running the same software, that was backwards compatible. Supposedly I could load the configuration from my old firewall directly into the new one and that would be it.

Well, no. I had issues with DNS from the start, but it didn't look like firewall issues. It looked more like flakey ISP issues. I had to go to the forums and, after FOUR days exchanging messages and spending hours each day, I finally got the new configuration tweaked so we didn't keep losing connectivity repeatedly. During this time, I wrote a letter to Netgate - to Sales, since they promise "zero to ping" tech support, but they don't have that contact email anywhere on the website. Hell, unless you pay for tech support, you have only the forum. A month later? Not one single reply on that email. (I was hoping Sales would at least say, "We gotta make sure this guy doesn't complain to others and badmouth us," and send me to tech support, but they ignored it.)

So now, while the whole country is on lockdown, I'm finding it takes 1/3 of a second for a ping to this device on a network that was working perfectly until I replaced the old pfSense firewall with the Netgate one running a new version of pfSense.

I don't know what's wrong with this system, but it keeps malfunctioning and creating issues that slow down connections when an old version of the same software, on old hardware, worked perfectly.

And help? No. They don't give it. Not even zero to ping. They don't care.

Time to go back to the old hardware. It worked. I guess I'll just have to bite the bullet and go through the old fashioned upgrade process because I sure as hell can't count on Netgate's equipment to work properly.

55 people found this helpful

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eric s

20% restocking fee, difficult to setup and slow

Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2019

Verified Purchase

I have been running PFsense for a few years on an old PC. I know the previous entry level box from netgate could not cope with a Gigabit connection, I thought this new version would be better. First I could not get the connection up and running after a few hours of trying I then restored the firmware and was finally able to use the device but I was topping out at 300mbs on fast.com where my PC based PFsense would be 900.

1. I should not have to restore firmware out of the box
2. 20% restocking fee is outrageous
3. device is slow.

58 people found this helpful

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katrina stewart

Slow and partial refund

Reviewed in the United States on August 2, 2020

Verified Purchase

From the moment i hooked it up, it was just really slow. Then it got to the point where it would no longer boot up. I return it and explain to them why. They then refund my money less 40.86. So i basically paid 40 bucks for nothing. Just a pain. I've returned things to Amazon before and it's always been a painless, easy process. I don't know why this way different, but I won't get Netgate again.

25 people found this helpful

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R.E.D. III

Very nice, albeit a bit memory starved

Reviewed in the United States on March 13, 2020

Verified Purchase

17 people found this helpful

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stangrunner

Nice quiet home router

Reviewed in the United States on September 22, 2019

Verified Purchase

Very well made, low power consumption and quiet fan less router. I would recommend it to others with less than 500mb/s home internet connections. Anything faster than that and you should step up to the next level router or setup an old desktop with the free downloadable pfsense software.

13 people found this helpful

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Aceman

Powerful and Easy to Use

Reviewed in the United States on March 6, 2020

Verified Purchase

This little firewall is the best! Don't let the small size fool you. This device is powerful and easy to set up. After my computer was attacked by ransomware (While I was setting up and testing a new network) I got this Netgate and set it up. Now ain't nobody gettin' in! Ranson this suckas! I got your bitcoin RIGHT HERE! Thanks Netgate! My customer is very happy.

9 people found this helpful

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Smoked

Reviewed in the United States on June 7, 2021

Verified Purchase

Unit has been very (very!) hot to the touch for several weeks and now finally started smoking. In service for 1 year, 9 months.

7 people found this helpful

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Mike B

Over priced, under powered.

Reviewed in the United States on January 16, 2022

Verified Purchase

I purchased this the SG-1100 for a couple reasons. Mostly i wanted to use PFBlocker and re-purpose my Raspberry Pi (pihole) for something else. Also, i wanted to mess around with IDS/IPS (as the Netgate website indicates it is capable of doing). Lastly, i wanted to learn how to configure more "advanced" firewall rules to create multiple networks (safe, private, iot, etc.).

This was my first experience with PF Sense and it was overall agreeable. It was easy to figure out and there is a lot of coverage online with how to use/configure the settings.

The first thing I set up was pfblocker. I added a number of block lists from firebog. My pihole runs 4.2 million domains (rpi 4B w/8g ram) with the cpu typically at 1-2% and ram at 3%. Adding this many to the SG-1100 was impossible. I got in the multiple 100k's before the ram was running around 90% and cpu was over 50%. Unbound (the DNS resolver) also repeatedly crashed and i would have to log in to restart it to get internet back up and running. When I deleted all the custom feeds (leaving the default IP and DNSBL feeds) the issues stopped and the ram dropped to around 25% and cpu went into the low teens. Don't quote me on the exact numbers, but it was quite significant.

I also gave suricata a shot. This doesn't run at all due to high ram and cpu usage. I didn't even try Snort assuming the same results. I didn't find any other IDS/IPS settings. Their website clearly states that this model can do this.

After using this for a couple of weeks as JUST a firewall/router i decided that my "old" router could do pretty much everything the SG-1100 was currently doing and I decided i didn't need it. So, still using my raspberry pi for pihole and not being able to play around with IDS/IPS, I returned the firewall appliance. I was informed that there may be a 20% restocking fee and $6 shipping fee to do this.

I will also note that this item had "broken" firmware on it and required customer support to solve it. My customer support ticket was answered within minutes (WHICH WAS AWESOME!) with adequate instruction. It required serial (?) access via putty and terminal usage to boot a new firmware from a USB flash.

I like the idea of using an official Netgate appliance, but to get the power needed, one needs to spend a fair amount of money to acquire the higher end models it seems (or build your own).

One person found this helpful

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R. Done

Cant do incoming port to a different port.

Reviewed in the United States on September 14, 2021

Verified Purchase

I am probably too critical, but for 6-8 years, had an old PC running Linux to be my internet router, since normal routers at the time had to be rebooted twice a week because of all the traffic I do. Got tired of the PC taking so much electricity, and bought an off the shelf router from a big box store. Figuring that newer ones would have 10 times the memory and be more stable than the ones I used to use. Not so much. Was looking for a tiny Linux computer when I found this. It is more stable than the normal routers, but is missing several key features. The most annoying is if you have 2 webservers, even 10 year old cheapo routers will let you route an incoming port 80 to 1 webserver at port 80, and incoming port 81 to a different server on port 80. This (angry words) wont change the port number, if it comes in on port 81, it had to go out as port 81. I could just make the second server listen on 80 and 81, but thats annoying. There are a couple other things that annoy me too, but cant think of them. On the other hand there are some handy features that arent common on regular routers.

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