The SENTRA NTS appliance

What the SENTRA NTS appliance is, the Home and SME tiers, and how it relates to running NTS on a virtual machine.

The SENTRA NTS appliance is a small, fanless network computer with SENTRA Network Threat Shield (Internet · NTS) pre-installed. It sits in the internet line of a home or business and protects everything behind it: attacks are stopped at the door, unwanted sites and apps are filtered, and family or office policies apply to the right devices.

The same NTS software also runs on a virtual machine or a data-centre server for carriers and large sites. The appliance is the packaged form for homes and SMEs.

Two tiers#

	Home	SME
For	Homes, home offices, small shops	Offices, schools, clinics, branches
Typical line	Fibre broadband	Business fibre, Dedicated Internet Access, two lines
Network ports	4–6 × 2.5 Gb/s	2.5 Gb/s ports plus 10 Gb/s fibre (SFP+) ports
Cooling	Fanless, silent	Fanless
Typical setup	Between the ISP modem/ONT and the home router (bridge), or as the home gateway (routed)	Between the carrier and the office firewall/switch (bridge), or as the office gateway with VPN and multi-WAN (routed)
Bypass (keeps the line up if the unit fails)	Software fail-open; manual bypass	Software fail-open; premium SME units with a hardware bypass

The exact models are listed in Reference platforms.

What's in the box#

The appliance, with SENTRA branding and port labels
A power adapter
A quick-start card with the Installation ID and how to reach the console

Ask your SENTRA provider for the exact contents of your unit.

How it is managed#

Option	How
By your provider	Most appliances are connected to the provider's SENTRA GUARD, which installs the licence, sends updates, backs the unit up and sets policies — nothing for you to do
Stand-alone	You (or your IT company) manage it in its own web console; signed updates come from the SENTRA release server

In this guide#

Administrators will find the software side in the SENTRA NTS — Administrator Manual (staff sign-in).