SonicWall Thoughts

[Aarondeep]

I have setup Netscreen 5GT's before and have had good luck in setting them up.
However our software vendor is deploying sonicwalls to all its other sites and its beginning to become a pain when we need some support.

I have decided to purchase a sonicwall to play around with. Anyone have any suggestions on which models I should be looking at?
I have looked at the TotalSecure10 and the TZ 170 I am having troubles on deciding which one to choose.

Anyone had any luck in creating tunnels with netscreens or even a PIX with these things before? Any help is appreciated guys.

 

[kt]

We are using TZ170 at our smaller satellite offices. They are pretty good and reliable. No problem creating VPN tunnels between with other VPN appliances with these. Setup them up with PIX, Fortinet, and other Sonicwalls without a lot of problems.

 

[kevnich2]

We too use Sonicwall TZ170's, very good and pretty reliable. It's never locked up once in the three years it's been in place.

 

[InlineFive]

 

[Aarondeep]

Thanks for the replies guys. Guess ill go with the TZ170.

 

[Brazen]

We are using a PRO 2040. When we first got it, we had nothing but problems and the thing was constantly locking up and needing rebooted. One of the firmware updates seems to have fixed things though. Now it runs with almost no problems... I think in the last year and a half it locked up and we had to reboot it one time.

 

[Genx87]

Netscreens seem to be very solid, I have two of them here and they never reboot. The one at our remote location has an uptime of 414 days.

 

[spidey07]

second the netscreen.

seems like nokia/checkpoint, cisco and juniper/netscreen rule this arena.

I haven't seen or used sonicwall in such a long time.

 

[Podolak]

The TZ 170 is a good unit. We have several TZ 170s along with Tele3 SPs. Our main SonicWalls consist of three Pro 3060 units which have been very reliable for us. I've been using SonicWalls for years now and have had good luck. I guess my vote is TZ 170!

 

[callowayrunner]

We are currently trying to decide between the Cisco Pix 515E and the Sonicwall Pro 3060. We have a website that maintains an average of 409536 averaged over 8 hours @ 30 connections ea at 5 minutes each. We can't afford to have down time from lockups. We were informed of a bug in the Sonicwall software that caused a lockup that was fixed in a firmware release. I just wanted to make sure users approved of the device and have seen the same result from the firmware upgrade. Users get the realworld experience the expert testers generally don't.

 

[nweaver]

not sure on money stuff, but make sonicwall get a performance test done in a 3rd party lab with your userloads. shouldn't be too hard to set stuff like that up, it's bread and butter testing for most QA firms (ours do net testing on this type of stuff all the time). Or, go with someone who backs up what they sell, like Cisco. If you go dark, you get quick support.

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: callowayrunner
We are currently trying to decide between the Cisco Pix 515E and the Sonicwall Pro 3060. We have a website that maintains an average of 409536 averaged over 8 hours @ 30 connections ea at 5 minutes each. We can't afford to have down time from lockups. We were informed of a bug in the Sonicwall software that caused a lockup that was fixed in a firmware release. I just wanted to make sure users approved of the device and have seen the same result from the firmware upgrade. Users get the realworld experience the expert testers generally don't.

I would think any decent firewall from juniper/netscreen, cisco, checkpoint/nokia would have no problems with that load.

networkworld generally has decent tests if you want to look there.

I'd push you in the nokia appliance direction mainly because the management is great and the performance rocks.

 

[Aarondeep]

After owning netscreens and these checkpoints I would move to more of an enterprise solution like netscreen or cisco. I have no experience with nokia, however Checkpoint has crashed on me once already =(. My netscreens have yet to. After buying the checkpoint I would have to say I am disappointed.
I must say tho that the product I purchased is aimed at the small business market and may not reflect enterprise solutions.

 

[wirelessenabled]

Gotta love almost any hardware firewall solution:

SonicWALL has been up: 140 Days, 19 Hours, 30 Minutes, 12 Seconds

The last reboot was due to a power outage. These hardware firewalls run and run and run.:thumbsup:

 

[InlineFive]

One thing I forgot to point out is that if you want to use client-to-site VPN I would strongly suggest looking elsewhere. They don't official support any VPN standards except with their own proprietary software, which is $50 per CAL.

Not to mention that unless you have an unlimited user license you will run into a wall real quick in terms of concurrent VPN connections.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: aarondeep
After owning netscreens and these checkpoints I would move to more of an enterprise solution like netscreen or cisco. I have no experience with nokia, however Checkpoint has crashed on me once already =(. My netscreens have yet to. After buying the checkpoint I would have to say I am disappointed.
I must say tho that the product I purchased is aimed at the small business market and may not reflect enterprise solutions.

The Nokia platform can make a world of difference with Checkpoint.