 So I finally have a chance to review the neck gate sg 3100 and We actually already tested it. So this is a unboxing video. That's kind of like some of the plastics removed It's not an iPhone or anything Which I know get people really excited when people take a lot of boxes never been a big unboxing guy a matter of fact Just because I don't like putting things back in boxes But here it is and all anything been removed was the plastic Sorry, I didn't have it on video when I peeled off the fresh layers But we'll show you what does come in box We'll start with the spacers here Nice heavy power cord which heavy that's an important thing. It's not one of those really thin Scary ones that might catch fire which we've seen if you plug them into high wattage things So thank you for packaging the power cord. We got a USB cable for assuming this would be for the council access on it Hopefully I'll never need that but they come they ship with it Power brick one power brick that is a 40 watts. So plenty of power This does not get warm. We did some testing like I said with it already And of course the part we really care about the neck heat sg 3100 itself now this is a The packaging is nice. We'll just cover that it's nice. It's well protected It was covered in plastic and had the little thing we peeled off so everything's nice and new and Fancy inside there The first thing we're gonna talk about those a power supply. I like these connectors We see these in some other commercial equipment great choice to put them on here and what we have is Let me drag something over here make this easier to see we have a power connector with a screw on tip And I like these and the reason for these is when we put this in We'll start with that It's not gonna come out So you kind of get that idea they're like pretty solid so On that thing that happens every now and then when you have something sitting in the rack and you slide it forward and The face you make one the power cord pulls out of the back because someone didn't leave enough slack when you're trying to Look and see what's plugged in the back and you shut down a network in middle of the day Yeah, anyways, that's not going to occur here with this so it's got the nice screw-in type So that is a feature that I always comment about I'd really like with this But now we can go over what is on the back of this so we have when opt one and For land ports and now these work in a very different way that I've seen Set up in PF sense before because they essentially are one you see land It shows you the individual parts. We'll cover the software side of this shortly So you see the individual ports, which is cool But they act as one so you don't get it's not like a box that has all Logical network ports it has these grouped together as land these are your other logical So technically you have three logical ports, but it's nice having a switch Only minor disappointing thing for those wondering it's in the documentation. These do not support spanning tree protocol So if you loop them together, you'll have an issue But whatever I don't think that's the world not a big deal. You're talking about advice it I think it's very reasonably priced That's kind of one of the reasons I want to review this because it's it's very fast It's very power efficient and it's very reasonably priced You get all the PF sense power in a really nice compact box So with your default is when and this being land and opt one being whatever you want it to be our predicted use case that we have for a lot of this is going to be opt one used as a Whale failover for when we usually have it assigned as like when to and just Have it for how I name them. I usually name the second one Whatever the backup internet is so if they have an AT&T line as their primary and a Comcast a secondary or whatever their fiber company Is they're using whichever it is we name them like that and that's that's so we can have the failover set up on there All right, so let's dig into the box itself now bottom of the box metal Nice got the serial number on there ID number model number The rubber feet nice grippy rubber, so it feels it feels solid It doesn't slide around when it's on there. I take out the four screws on the bottom and We reveal the guts inside here Standard plastic ABS kind of feeling plastic on there easy holds up good. It feels I like it feels nice Now once we're inside we have a few different things. We're gonna notice. Here's that extra expansion here We appear to have like an m-sata in a PCIe we got m-sata over here. Yes Yep m-sata and USB another one here and this is a PCIe port So pretty simple design and your standard battery, which thank you for using a standard battery that you're gonna find all over the place your CR 2032 Battery for holding settings and time on that So pretty straightforward now the process. I'm not gonna take this apart They do have the little red dye on it to probably like the Loctite to make sure you don't do these It's the same the same as true head. Yeah, that as the other one was but I'm not taking it apart I'm assuming this base is how it dissipates the heat With the process for being right there now We did notice after we ran it for a while it got kind of warm, but not certainly not hot not it We'll look at the temperatures when we show you the software and it tells you what the temperature is in there It's how the temperature registered it didn't feel that hot from the outside So I'm guessing it's measuring the core of the temperature But it's not anything at all to be concerned about now side note. They did put a Kensington lock on this So you have a locking mechanism so you can do the Kensington locks if someone doesn't Walk off with your firewall now. You may have noticed that there's a couple lights here and they're Piped out right to the edge so you can see them It turns out they are not in a manual, but they are programmable so you can take a look at that The basic of it is right now. You have a glowy Light I these blue that's going to be our it's booting up and it's on and then we have orange when it needs an update But the nice thing is your programmable. They have documentation So if you wanted to do some hacking you could write your own reasons for lights to do things or Future releases may contain other updates that add to that. So that's the inside But they said not a lot inside, but they're nice. I want like I said, I just want to get a look inside of it I'll get an idea now. Let's get to the important part and a part we all really care about is the software side of it That's really what matters with pfSense. We didn't buy it to look at it. It's not an Apple device We want to actually use it. I guess you could use Apple devices. It was not really a fan so alright, let's jump into the software and Talk about the details of it in a processor in it in a RAM And what it looks like when you try to route really fast over it and have sericata running And I know where all the screws are and I'm putting them all back in Alright, so we got the SG-3100 plugged in booted up and ready to go the blue light is the indicator that it's on It's kind of like it doesn't stay steady kind of fades in and out nice not too annoying that lets you know that it's on and ready One I first plugged it in and started setting up ahead an orange light I didn't read the instructions first because why? And that turns out the orange light was for an update once we update the orange light went out So that's what the lights mean the other one is currently unused But they have future options you can find in a forum and they got information if you wanted to start hacking away at it yourself It's open source. So they document things and let you mess around with it back to the device though a Boot up time really fast So that was nice to see and it just jumps right in boot trade up now What you're gonna see is I think the boot up time being right around with Saracada installed still under 60 seconds So if you accidentally do have to power-cycle it or how long before you have to check again while you wait for something to happen It's gonna be a roughly 60 second for a reboot Really do you ever have to reboot firewalls the update did take a little bit longer? I think the update took about I don't know maybe two minutes to load I didn't really time it, but it was really it was so relatively fast. So no issues there Heat-wise it says it's running at 59. I can put my hand on the bottom of it So I don't really think it's at 59 It must be measuring the core of the processor temperature, but the device itself is very very cool So it doesn't seem to have much heat going into it. I've got Saracada running on it already I turn that on as part of when I was turning on the setup I just want to make sure I had something some type of load on it On the interfaces, you notice this looks a little bit different than you may have seen with normal PF sense So like I said, you have three logical networks, but you do have all four of these Operating as they are attached lands. So basically it has a switch built into it. I'll be the simple way to describe that And you notice you have switches here as an under interface assignment Now it doesn't let you like I said assign these logically It sees the ports, but it doesn't let you have any logical assignment to them to create a separated Networks and things like that. They're a switch. They're all bridged together Just like a normal switch would be so essentially you're getting a firewall a three port firewall But the third port is tied to a switch It does detect whether or not they're plugged in and tells you, you know what it's plugged in at gigabit 100 whichever It does seem to have link aggregation support on there. Maybe I don't know I see it in here I don't know if this is something futures are going to do where where you maybe tie and lag together one of the land ports with One of those I don't I don't really see the idea for this really is that to be a switch So there's a couple options in here, but I'm gonna skip over that But as your normal assignments as they are whan land opt one and like I said our use case that we Forsee with this but for a lot small businesses is going to be opt one becoming the failover whan because dual internet Is pretty much a necessity in a lot of places now? When you assign the V lands, this is actually kind of nice as well. So if I had a V land and I added it to Land these then all become the head and trunk ports for me to connect to another switch So we do a lot of unify installs as you know And that's frequently will create a couple extra V lands off of the unified switch so people can have their separate IOT devices easy to do tie it to land So you can plug your couple devices in but then have your unify go Nope, this is a separate network that has its own set of rules For that really easy to do inside here So we would just create that that against this land and it would push out the V land information Now like I said, I have the services running like Sarah Cotta on here If you notice to going through the menus, this is not sped up. This is fast This system works quite well. So if we want to stop Sarah Cotta, we're gonna go ahead and stop And it stopped and we can go ahead and start it and see how long it takes to start one two three four What are we up to maybe 10 seconds here and There we go, so mid 12 seconds to start it not bad that's actually reasonably fast Sarah Cotta If you've used it, you know, it's a little loading all the rules sets in things like that is takes some Take some processor power to get that going system remains quite snappy while you're doing it So you see the processor used to cheer and we're still low memory usage for it So that's typical of PF sense. Just it's not real memory intensive. So here's your Temperature is now up to 62 and let's do what you all want to really know. Will it route a gig of it? Yeah I've already spoiled it. Yes, it will. So here's me rerunning the same test again and Here we go So a little bit of drop in there, but there's other things running on my network So this couldn't let's try it one more time. So we have a better test. They said it would route a gig of it It does appear to be routing a gig of it. So if you have a gig of it internet connection, you're able to route there So we had 902 versus 898 try one more and this is by the way with Sarah Cotta on because obviously there's benchmarks that are perfect scenarios and then there's You know, then then there's this right here So we have at least something running on it that might cause a little bit of a slowdown So you're you're still in the same range. Just try it now with suricata off services suricata Stop, I'll see if it makes any difference on the speed test Oops For those wondering I'm using IPerph 3 for the speed testing. Yeah, we're a little bit faster with suricata off Nothing substantial. It's it's a really minor. We're probably what what is that about a one less than a percent difference? so we went from a 910 and 908 from 904 901 so that tiny little bit of a difference pretty like I said pretty minor on there So the speed is what it says. I'm not going to do any specific VPN testing They even have said themselves that this system which does have the Marvel cryptographic Engine in here. So it for open VPN, which they can use that they're currently getting a hundred meg For open VPN, I believe it's 300 for IP sec VPNs. So this is a really ideal Little box for running it at home. You want to create a home network? Maybe you work for home But need a pure VPN to the office because you have a couple things that you want connected like your phone system and stuff like that At your house there and you want on a separate network because you want the kids stuff over here And you want something that has traffic shaping and all those fun features. This is a great device Um, that's actually a nice feature of PF sense is you get all the power of PF sense But in a box that's not breaking the bank. I'm really impressed with this overall Like I said the power brick not even warm. So the power brick itself is Is well is probably a little bit more wattage than this needs and we'll get to exact wattage uses in just a second here I got to plug the measuring device in I got to find it So overall I'm really impressed with it. It's nice. It's clean. The design is good It's well made. I like the metal base on it. Like I said when we took it apart Real happy at this device. So can't really complain about it having the land ports that are all gigabit That means that you're you got plenty of a little bit of exp you know play expansion Like I said, this is a great for small businesses where I don't have to put in this and another switch so many places have like one thing plugged in and That's all we need is one or two devices plugged in and maybe a Wi-Fi device and that's it And we got four ports here to do that So same as if you're a home user, I mean, of course, you're gonna jump into an R switch and do more with it If you wanted to but out of the box you're up and running You get support right from that gate with this and the nice thing is when you buy something from that gate for those You maybe didn't catch it. There are people who make pf. Sense You don't have to worry about the updates. You can't go. Oh, no. Will this update have a problem? No They test the updates on their equipment. So when they send you an update for this You know the updates gonna work and if you're like us here updating a lot of things remotely You really want to know that it's going to work. So that's really important So my review is buy this thing if you're looking for a great little firewall That is a solid well-made and has a couple extra ports So you can just plug in it at home much better than that crap That's out there like link sys and some of those other ones that you probably got the old blue box one sitting around You're trying to decide what to buy for an upgrade or do you build one? This is right now. It's 349 a neck eight site. I'll leave a link in the description below where you can get it It's definitely great. This is a this is a nice little box. It's a low power low heat And let me jump over to the wattage here. It peaks at like seven watts And Idols at five so I run in data through it It hits like seven watts and sits here idle about five and a half and like I said low wattage So definitely a great little device to have if you're looking for a pf. Sense box That's all in one You don't want to worry about buying something strange from third-party and how the support might go for it This is this is really great overall from the source itself from the pf. Sense folks over at neck eight So all right feel like to kind of here like a subscribe You need help with pf. Sense or network engineering or things like that go ahead and contact us We do consulting and setups as well and thanks for watching