Fortinet FortiGate 81F

The FortiGate 81F is actively sold and fully supported, with FortiGuard and FortiCare subscriptions available for 1, 3, and 5-year terms. It runs on the Fortinet SoC4 secure SD-WAN ASIC and the latest FortiOS releases.

Performance is identical — both run on the same SoC4 ASIC with 900 Mbps threat protection and 10 Gbps firewall throughput. The FortiGate 81F adds a 128 GB onboard SSD for local logging and reporting, so logs and reports run on the appliance without a separate FortiAnalyzer. Choose the 80F when on-box storage is not required.

The onboard SSD stores traffic and security logs and lets the appliance generate reports locally. For a single-site or small branch deployment that means full logging and reporting without deploying a separate FortiAnalyzer or FortiCloud logging subscription.

The 81F-POE adds six GE PoE/+ ports and a 96 W power budget so it can power IP phones, FortiAP access points and cameras directly. Both models have the 128 GB SSD and identical throughput. Choose the 81F when PoE is not required.

Most mid-size branches choose UTP (Unified Threat Protection) for IPS, anti-malware, application control, plus web, DNS and video filtering and antispam. ATP covers core threat prevention only. Enterprise adds DLP, AI inline malware prevention, and the full FortiGuard service set. All bundles include FortiCare Premium support.