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Vortex

Security Gateway Appliances

Vortex 1541

Featuring a Eight Core Intel Xeon® 2.1 GHz, upgradable memory up to 32 GB, and expandable network interfaces up to (8) ports the Netgate 1541 achieves up to 18.8 Gbps routing performance.

Vortex 1537

Featuring an Eight Core Intel Xeon® 1.7 GHz, upgradable memory up to 32 GB, and expandable network interfaces (up to 8 ports) the Netgate 1537 achieves up to 18.8 Gbps routing performance.

Vortex 6100

Vortex 6100 is an ideal edge gateway solution for any organization in need of versatile network connectivity with 1 to 10 Gbps flexible WAN/LAN connections and 8 GB of DDR4 memory.

Vortex 4100

Vortex Security offers the Vortex 4100, the perfect solution for pro-home, small/medium businesses, or edge deployments. Its flexible port configurations support 1 to 2.5 Gbps WAN capabilities across (2) RJ45 copper / SFP fiber Combo WAN ports and (4) discrete, unswitched 2.5 Gbps RJ-45 ethernet LAN ports.

Vortex 2100

Vortex 2100 is ideal for home, remote worker, and small business deployments. Featuring a Dual core ARM Cortex A53 1.2 GHz CPU, a dedicated 1 GbE WAN port (RJ45/SFP combo), (4) 1 GbE Marvell switch ports, 4GB of DDR4 RAM, and upgradeable storage. The 2100 has additional expansion slots available for DIY LTE, Wi-Fi or M.2 SSD expansion.

Vortex 1100

Vortex 1100 security gateway appliance is the ideal microdevice for the home and small office network. With a compact form factor, low power draw, and silent operation . Featuring a Dual-core ARM Cortex-A53 1.2 GHz CPU, (3) 1 GbE ports, and 1 GB of DDR4 RAM, the Netgate 1100 enables up to 927 Mbps routing and 607 Mbps of firewall throughput.

Feature Considerations

Most features on Vortex Security have minimal impact on hardware sizing; however, a few can significantly affect hardware utilization. Notably, the VPN services integrated into pfSense software necessitate increased CPU requirements due to the CPU-intensive task of encrypting and decrypting traffic. While the number of connections is not a major concern, it is imperative to consider the required throughput. Additionally, if your environment encompasses numerous simultaneous captive portal users, slightly more CPU power than the recommended amount may be necessary. In terms of state tables, each entry consumes approximately 1 KB of RAM. The default state table size is calculated based on 10% of the available RAM in the firewall. Therefore, in larger environments with several hundred thousand or even millions of connections, ensuring sufficient RAM availability becomes crucial. Lastly, it is advisable not to install certain packages like Snort and ntop on systems with less than 1 GB RAM as they significantly increase RAM requirements.

Network Card Selection

Selection of network cards (NICs) plays a crucial role in the performance of your setup. In order to avoid bottlenecks and missed packets caused by cheap NICs overwhelming your CPU with interrupt handling, it is essential to invest in quality NICs. Especially when utilizing pfSense software to safeguard your wireless network or segment multiple LAN segments, prioritizing throughput between interfaces becomes more critical than throughput to the WAN interface(s). For optimal performance and reliability, Intel chipsets are highly recommended when using pfSense software. Vortex Security advises purchasing Intel cards or systems with built-in Intel NICs up to 1Gbps. However, for speeds exceeding 1Gbps, considering other factors and NIC vendors is necessary to achieve peak performance.

Protect Your Network

By choosing Vortex Security as your source for Vortex® hardware, whether directly from us or through a Vortex Partner, you not only contribute to the project’s growth, but also simplify the process of finding the perfect hardware solution tailored to your requirements. Our Vortex security gateway appliances have undergone extensive testing and have been successfully deployed across a wide range of both large and small network environments.