FortiGate-60F Network Security Appliance Plus 1 Year FortiGuard Enterprise Protection and FortiCare Premium (FG-60F-BDL-809-12)

Former Network Engineer here from ages past - I received my CCNA before CIDR notations were a thing.Most Consumer WiFi 'Routers' (Netgear, Linksys, Asus, etc) that are also used for connectivity for PCs/XBoxes have underpowered/crippled Broadcom (and others) silicon and sometimes have software switched ethernet!While it can be argued the firmware of a specific vendor has a lot to do with it, a large chunk of consumer WiFi gear uses the same underlying operating system; Linux with some binary firmware blobs (for the wifi controller/ethernet etc). OpenWRT seems better, but it still requires binary blobs.Now, the 60F I purchased is not a WiFi router, but it's a enterprise-class firewall, which can /behave/ like a router. It has IPv4/6 support, NAT, IDS, Firewalling, etc. Supports OSPF, BGP, RIP, Multicast.. However, the additional items (IDS, Antivirus) for this product are *not* cheap for the average home user. I'm sure there are similar vendors (Sonicwall, etc) that have cheaper options.Now - to the replacement:My existing setup was an Edgerouter. Ubiquiti products like the ER are awful (ER has hardware accel disabled by default and only decided to document it recently(?)). Was connected to Comcast Business and getting IPv4/IPv6 over DHCP. A common setup for home users.The Wireless router was Netgear R7800 connected to switch0 on the ER. (The R7800, as a consumer router, is just... bad. And slow. The GUI is doesn't have expansive options compared to other vendors that use the same exact Qualcomm radios. )Unpacking was easy, connected Comcast to 'Wan1' and then a Computer to 'Port 1' - DHCP was already configured, and it immediately had internet access. Had to do some post configuration tweaking to get it to work the way I wanted with IPv6, DNS server on the LAN, etc.This device has 8 CPUs, hardware-accelerated Ethernet switching, etc..Model name: FortiGate-60FASIC version: SOC4CPU: ARMv8Number of CPUs: 8RAM: 1918 MBEMMC: 3662 MB(MLC) /dev/mmcblk0Hard disk: not availableUSB Flash: not availableNetwork Card chipset: FortiASIC NP6XLITE Adapter (rev.)Pros:- The GUI is very nice, as well as having SSH ship out of the box- A lot of common settings are available in the GUI- Fast (Hardware accelerated Ethernet, switching, firewalling/NAT, etc)- Plenty of memory.- Has support for OSPF, BGP, VPN, IDS (Antivirus, DNS blocking, Anti-Spam, etc etc), SNMP, DHCP, NAT/SNAT, NAT64, Traffic Shaping/QoS, VLANs, etc.- 21W of power usage - doing multiple gigabit transfers from the switchports- Low CPU usage when doing nearly full saturation of the ports - unlike my R7800 that would have load spikes of doing any large transfers which would kill WiFi performance- 10Gbit/s L3 forwarding performance- Can do a gigabit+ of firewallingCons:- IPv6 interfaces aren't configurable/showing in the GUI. You need to use CLI to set it up- Some things will /require/ the CLI (ie: get hardware status)- The documentation on some things could be betterGet yourself a few cheap WiFi APs and use this device for a router. You'll never look back.

Tons of features. If you’re new to networking you may have some issues with setup.There are 100s of YouTube videos that will guide you in setting up. Quality is great, functionality is great.This is an annual subscription device. If you want to pay a few hundred a year for protection, this is a must have.Cons:Connecting to other VPN services is not possible currently.So OpenVPN, WireGuard, and others aren’t able to be integrated at the moment. However they do have a vpn config app for devices.

Enterprise grade config and security options for less than a lot of SOHO routers these days. This thing is great.I got the 60 over the 40 so I had the option of dual WAN ports but it wasn't necessary. You could definitely get by with a 40.The yearly UTP license might feel a bit steep but, when you consider what it's providing, it's a deal. Your average SOHO router has so little put into it after release, it's no wonder firmware updates are free.I really don't have anything bad to say about it. It's perfect. And, you can get a free unlimited trial license for the FortiAnalyzer VM to partner with it for some amazing logging, monitoring and overall metrics on your network. You can even use it for a syslog server for non-Fortinet gear.

I recently bought into a business that literally had no firewall or other security in place. Ive used fortigate in other companies and for the price, the 60f is a great value. Very familiar from what I’ve used in the past and the GUI is easy to navigate and use. I paired this firewall with a unifi U6 pro WiFi deployment running vlans and it works perfect! My company has 11 employees and approximately 60 nodes on the network. The 60f is perfect for this size enterprise. Very happy!

NOTE that the description of this is Very confusing and actually incorrect.It states 10GE RJ45 ports.The actual documentation is10 x GE RJ45 portsmeaning ten 1G ethernet ports.So I will be sending it back as I need 10G ports for my internal network. Other than that, this firewall is absolutely mindblowingly amazing. Best interface around.