FortiGate-60F Firewall Appliance - 10 Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 Ports, Includes DMZ, WAN & Internal Ports (Appliance Only, No Subscription) (FG-60F)

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.

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.

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.

Best item, best product. Thanks A+

This 2GB RAM Fortinet ran FortiOS 7.2 great in its day, but has serious problems running the newer 7.4 FortiOS code and the older 7.2 is going EOL in 2026.. Go for the 4GB 70F which is nearly exactly the same. 2GB is not recommended in 2025. Also - Blue Ally is a good vendor.

Awesome firewall. Have it setup with rules and policies. Support is great as well.

After an unfortunate power event, the current firewall solution was zapped and needed to be replaced. Needing to get the network operational ASAP, I tried to same-day / overnight order the same firewall solution (Zyxel USG FLEX 200) which would make it easy to import the backed-up firewall configuration.As luck would have it, that was not an available option and so I decided to get the FortiGate solution. My co-workers with similar setups have spoken well of the platform and I decided maybe this was the time to make the switch.The FortiGate 60F Firewall Appliance is a capable solution and provides a whole host of features. Many of the reviews complain about the unit's overly complex user interface and some have gone even as far as claiming it does not work. I can tell you neither of those are true. My suspicion is those users are familiar with simpler firewall solutions that provide a less complicated user interface that certainly makes it easier to configure those types of units but I can assure you would not offer the type of flexibility this or similar units can.This is my first time using a FortiGate product but the interface was very capable, very configurable and used familiar techniques like Policies and Objects. Though a bit more difficult for some to grasp, this approach is both flexible and logical and is used by all the major players in mid-tier and above firewall appliances.So why did I give this unit 1 star?--------------------------------------On initial set-up, the unit warned of setting-up support details. At the time, those are secondary settings as far as I was concerned since I was focused on getting the network up and running, configuring the Virtual IPs (used for reverse proxy) and the hosted VPN connections. I would get to the more complex configurations (like DMZ, etc) later ... just needed to get the network operational.Once that was done, I decided to go ahead and complete the support information so I could get rid of the alarm / warning notices on the console. To my surprise, I had to first sign-up and create an account on their cloud platform before going any further. I do not ever want to do that but there was no way around it. The item that caused me to get turned-off from this unit was that patches (any type of patch or upgrade or even the most basic support) was a paid service. This means the device I purchased could not be upgraded (not even to the latest version) and would never be upgraded if I did not buy a license for support! Said another way, you have to pay them for bug fixes (i.e. bugs in their platform).Sorry, that is a horrible product strategy. I now actively warn anyone that talks with me about firewalls and especially if they are considering a FortiGate platform.I will be returning the FortiGate 60F and will go back to the Zyxel platform.