>>106282193
Firewall appliances can do thinks like url/dns filtering, packet inspection, ddos and other attack prevention, etc.
I used to use a TP-Link ER605 router which is okay for normie use and I even made use of vlan networking but its capabilities werent enough

This past year I swapped the er605 out for a fortigate 60f (in >>106282520) and its great. I haden't touched a fortinet appliance since 2018 and it was nice seeing how far they've come in terms of features as well as automation tooling

>>105989421
For me, its Fortinet
>>105991835
>"spend all that money on a network that size?"
>meaning that more than 4 ports is a large number of ports to have
what the absolute fuck are you smoking
My home 'router' is a Fortigate 60F with 7 ports, and 3 aditional ports (DMZ, Wan1, Wan2)
I have an unmanned switch and network for 'guest' devices (i wired my home for ethernet), a manned switch and network for 'limited' devices (think IOT stuff but could be shady chink stuff i'd wanna crack down on) and a manned switch and network for 'trusted' devices. I use vlans to merge wifi/wired devices on either network. Static ip assignment list is like, 50+ devices

I consider this to be SMALL (each switch is only an 8 port switch).

>can stitch together virtual switches
>can inspect ssl traffic
>can act as an authentication server and redirect inbound traffic to different interal resources based on the credentials used
>built-in automation framework, you can do insane shit like send yourself an email or text message if your public IP address changes or the device just recovered from a power failure
Why don't more people use fortinet appliances?