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Netgate Launches 4200 Max Security Gateway with pfSense Plus Software

Written by Jon Garside | April 16, 2024

 

With over 10 million deployments across homes, small businesses, enterprises, service providers, and governments, pfSense® is the world’s leading open-source-driven firewall, router, and VPN solution for network edge and cloud secure networking. 

Netgate® is pleased to announce the Max version of the 4200 Security Gateway with pfSense® Plus software. The Netgate 4200 Max comes with 128GB NVMe SSD storage preinstalled (upgraded from the base Netgate 4200's 8 GB eMMC storage). It includes free updates to pfSense Plus software for the life of the hardware and complimentary TAC Lite assistance and is available for $649.

About the Netgate 4200 Max 

The Netgate 4200 Max Security Gateway (router/firewall/VPN) is an ideal network solution for small and medium businesses. It has blazing-fast performance thanks to its 4-core Intel® Atom® C1110 CPU running at 2.1 GHz. The Netgate 4200 Max achieves benchmark results in routing, firewall, and IPsec VPN that are up to THREE TIMES FASTER than the Netgate 4100. 

The Netgate 4200 Max provides the flexibility and throughput that small to medium business networks require, with four discrete 2.5 Gb Ethernet WAN/LAN ports. With pfSense Plus software, it delivers fast and secure VPN, whether site-to-site (with cloud providers or between branch offices) or remote for off-site workers. It supports IPsec, OpenVPN®, and WireGuard® protocols and delivers VPN throughput that normally requires a much more expensive device.

Storage and pfSense Plus

For customers who need additional storage for their pfSense Plus appliance, particularly those who have large log files or make heavy use of ZFS boot environments/snapshots, or who rely on add-on packages that require additional storage (like Snort, Suricata, and pfBlockerNG), the 128GB of high-speed NVMe storage that comes with the 4200 Max should more than meet their requirements. Users will also benefit from faster storage access and a longer lifetime (higher capacity allows for more even distribution of read/write access to the flash memory over time). 

Background

Embedded Multi-Media Card (eMMC) storage combines flash memory and the flash memory controller into a unified package that is small and power-efficient and is very popular for consumer electronics (including smartphones and tablets), automotive and industrial applications, and edge network devices. It is typically slower than SSD storage, but the latest version (eMMC 5.1A) achieves a base transfer speed of about 400 MB/sec, which is on par with the transfer speed of SATA SSDs.

Non-volatile memory Express (NVMe) storage is a type of SSD that is not constrained by the limits of SATA and is capable of achieving much higher transfer speeds (about 3.5 GB/sec) while supporting higher capacity. 

Wrap-up

The Netgate 4200 Max, with the addition of 128GB NVMe storage, joins the Netgate 4200 as a Security Gateway (router/firewall/VPN) with best-in-class processing power. It delivers the advanced capabilities and industry-leading reliability of pfSense Plus software, all at a great price. It is an ideal solution for small to medium businesses. Simply head over to our e-commerce site here, which provides the full rundown of product specifications. As always, if you have a specific question, we can be reached anytime by phone or email.