30 May 2018 by Michael Tremer
We are proud to announce our first ARM-based appliance: The IPFire Nano Box
This small and versatile system will be our latest addition to our professional IPFire Appliance line and will make IPFire ready to deployed on the Internet of Things as well as in smallest locations like a remote working office or in industrial plants.
Together with our hardware parter TX-Team, and with input from many customers, we have designed this new appliance. For the first time, we layouted and are manufacturing the whole baseboard from scratch for an optimal firewall product and also to be able to act as cost-efficient as possible.
The proud result is up to our highest standards in performance, easy handling, versatile deployment where ever our customers need it, maximum extensibility for many different tasks and of course security.
In the weeks to come, I would like to tell you the stories behind our new product and how it came to be. It has been a long journey and we have invested so much effort and thought into creating this for you and - to us - many of those are worth sharing.
Although this is the smallest of all products, in some ways, it is the greatest.
The IPFire Nano Box provides connectivity wherever needed and wherever possible. It has two Fast Ethernet ports and an optional WiFi and LTE/3G module.
A quad-core ARM Cortex-A7 processor has enough power to run multiple secure IPsec or OpenVPN connections to your company’s headquarter or data center where connected IoT applications can send their data to. It can also be used in places where our IPFire Duo Box is too large and where only limited performance is needed. For example to provide connectivity via DSL or 4G and WiFi for a remote worker at home.
Wherever the IPFire Nano Box is deployed, it provides the full range of functionality that the IPFire Distribution has which is much more than what most 4G or DSL routers provide. And of course using one software everywhere makes many things a lot easier, too!
In the basic configuration, the power consumption is only 2 watts which will allow the IPFire Nano Box to be battery-powered over a long time as well.
It is wrapped in an industrial aluminium case in a small form-factor, passively cooled of course and IP50 proof. Surrounding temperatures between zero and 60°C are not a problem and its wide-band voltage input of 12-24V allow deploying the system even under difficult circumstances.
As soon as we have released the product, we will also release our designs, plans and mockups as Open Hardware for everyone to audit and review. With this, we will provide you with a 100% transparent system on which you can build other applications if you want to.
We have just completed the prototyping stage of this new hardware and mass-production is starting soon. Since we have already received huge interest about our product in the conversations with our customers over the phone, we are excited to keep you updated about the status.
If you would like to know more about the IPFire Nano Box, or register your interest, please get in touch with our sales team at sales@lightningwirelabs.com.