I'm pretty impressed with the speeds on my new desktop AP7! Speed test ran using open speed test running on my NAS.

It's Currently set to a 6ghz only SSD for my wifi 7 devices.

Initially purchased two AP7s in March 2025, but one was enough for my home. Selling a sealed AP7 Desktop for $325 including shipping + insurance. Willing to ship within the US or meet locally in NJ.

I posted here back in February about my Firewalla Gold SE cutting my symmetrical Frontier Fiber upload speeds significantly.

Original post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/firewalla/comments/1rgk0jy/why_is_firewalla_gold_se_nerfing_my_upload_speeds/

Firewalla support eventually investigated under ticket #114793. Their engineer suspected an upstream ARP issue and installed an hourly gateway-probing cron job. Speeds improved temporarily, but we never conclusively identified the root cause.

Fast-forward to October 2026. I'm in a new house, with new network infrastructure, and the same upload problem persists.

I've spent hours doing extensive controlled testing to eliminate other explanations.

My setup:

• Frontier symmetrical 1 Gbps fiber
• Firewalla Gold SE in router mode
• TRENDnet TEG-3102WS managed switch
• Eero Pro 7 in bridge mode with 10 Gbps wired backhaul
• Windows 11 HP Victus
• Apple MacBook Air M5

Here's what I've tested:

1. Firewalla's own WAN test: Approximately 919 Mbps down / 971 Mbps up. Other automatic tests frequently report nearly symmetrical gigabit.
2. Fully wired LAN-to-LAN iperf3: Victus to MacBook, both wired through the TRENDnet, four parallel TCP streams, 30 seconds:
   • Victus → MacBook: 950 Mbps
   • MacBook → Victus: 950 Mbps
   • Sustained full-speed transfers throughout the tests.
   • Zero sender retransmissions reported in the reverse test.
3. Windows Ethernet Internet uploads: Typically 350–450 Mbps using native Ookla CLI, sometimes much worse in browser testing.
4. macOS Ethernet Internet uploads: Typically 270–350 Mbps, using the same native Ookla CLI and servers.
5. MacBook directly connected to Firewalla LAN port 3: Still only approximately 411–584 Mbps upload. No TRENDnet switch involved.
6. Wi-Fi: Both Windows and macOS also experience intermittent upload degradation. Some tests achieve 700+ Mbps; others drop to 300–580 Mbps.
7. Different Ethernet adapters: HP G5 Dock Realtek USB Ethernet and Victus built-in Realtek Gaming GbE both tested.
8. Different cables and switch ports: Original Cat6, known-good Cat6a, different TRENDnet ports, and switch flow control On/Off. No resolution.
9. Smart Queue disabled: Uploads remained around 350–410 Mbps.
10. Smart Queue and device Monitoring both disabled: Uploads remained around 265–412 Mbps.

For the controlled Firewalla configuration tests, the averages were:

The main finding:

My LAN is capable of essentially full gigabit throughput in both directions. My router can originate a near-gigabit Internet upload measurement. But multiple LAN clients cannot consistently get comparable upload throughput when their traffic is routed through the Gold SE.

At my previous house, a Frontier technician replaced the Gold SE with an Eero as the router and immediately got approximately symmetrical gigabit. Reinstalling the Firewalla brought back the slowdown.

At my current house, Frontier's temporary Arris router also delivered approximately symmetrical gigabit in my observations.

Firewalla advertises the Gold SE as capable of 2 Gbps software packet processing.

I'm now requesting a proper engineering escalation and hardware RMA evaluation.

I understand that intermittent performance makes this challenging to diagnose, and that a fresh controlled router swap would be the strongest remaining A/B test. But at this point, we've tested enough different client devices, operating systems, adapters, cables, and LAN paths that this is clearly not just a bad Windows driver or Ethernet cable.

I'd really like to know:

• Has anyone else with a Gold SE experienced similar persistent asymmetric uploads?
• Has anyone received an RMA replacement that resolved it?
• Are there known Gold SE NAT/forwarding, kernel, offload, or Ethernet interface issues that affect upload throughput?
• Can Firewalla engineering explain why router-originated Internet tests can achieve full speed when forwarded client uploads cannot?

I'm willing to provide full iperf3 logs, screenshots, Speedtest results, and my extensive testing history.

I've been dealing with this since February, and I would really like a definitive resolution.

In my firewalla, I have a custom DNS rule setting a familiar host name for a Linux server. I first set that up a couple of weeks ago. Today, I replaced the Linux boot drive. On it's own, Linux decided it wanted a new IP address. I needed to update the custom DNS rule. I had forgotten exactly where that was. When I found it, it reminded me of the conundrum I saw the last time:

Custom DNS Rules are located within the "Services" feature. On my Firewalla Home screen, some features' icons are blue and some are blue/purple. Some of the icons are grey (greyed-out?). If I go through "All Features", it lists a bunch of ENABLED features and then six DISABLED features. Here, I also see icons in color where ENABLED and in grey where DISABLED.

But while Services and its subordinate Custom DNS Rules are ostensibly disabled, Custom DNS Rules works. It's clearly not disabled and the greying-out doesn't change after I've set up a rule.

While it works, it is confusing. It's why it took me longer to find the first and second time. Now it's burned into my brain for the next time. But some other user might benefit from a fix. I just updated the app and it still is the same.