I am an admin on a medium sized network, and we currently use a SONICWALL ROUTER/FIREWALL, and have been having significant internet connectivity issues. We often loose all internet connectivity for apparently no reason, we lose our VPN connection often, and our connection speeds suck! Our line is supposed to be a 10 meg line but with the sonicwall connected we get 2meg down at best! Sometimes we get 9meg when we connect directly to the sircuit with a laptop. At first we figured it was the ISP's(XO) fault, but it seems like out London office has some of the same issues because their firewall is always going down as well.
SO...
My question is, are SONICWALL firewalls pieces of trash, or is it an isp issue? Our ISP says we must use a layer 3 routing device, and recommends we only use CISCO routers, namely the 2200, 1700, or 7206. Is this our best option? If we should only go the CISCO route, than are there any other CISCO routers, or router firewall combinations that would work well for us.
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do you know IOS?
If not, then no, you don't need a Cisco product.
Sonicwall devices are pretty good abeit costly with all the licensing requirements for the add ons.
I would look at Sonicwall's site for any info regarding the problems your seeing and whether they have identified it as a problem and the resulting fix.
Sonicwall devices are pretty good abeit costly with all the licensing requirements for the add ons.
I would look at Sonicwall's site for any info regarding the problems your seeing and whether they have identified it as a problem and the resulting fix.
18th Jan 2007
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NO YOU DONT
We have been using Sonicwall for years. I have never experienced the problem you are having. I have over 50 sonicwalls connectin 30 different cusotmers that are geographically diverse. I have used Cisco and will never go back to it. IT's a high maintenance administration device that requires unique training and a high TCO. Keep your firmware on your sonicwall up to date and it will perform wonderfully. Also consider the Enhanced OS for Sonicwall. You dont need all those IDS, COntentfilters, etc if you dont want them. THey are great in the sense that you dont need another appliance to make it work (Like you would with Cisco). XO is a ISP we use and we have issues with them often as well. I dont necessarily agree with there assessment. I think if you look at an alternate ISP, it may be a better option. XO uses some unique equipment to deliver service. I know that some of there T1's use dynamic channel addressing so if you have high voice usage, your bandwidth will decrease.
2nd May 2007
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For others looking at this
With a large pipe like you have SonicWALL may slow it down since it could be removing virus from the connections. This can slow down your connection depending on your model. The NSA series are very fast at doing this and would be recommended for pipelines like this. With the older SonicWALLs just turn off this feature and test it out to see if it makes a difference.
15th May 2009
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Similar Story
This was way back in 2004, but had almost identical issues. We had SonicWall Tele3's deployed out in the remote offices, and they would drop their connection about once a month. You multiply this by 10 offices, and it was a major administrative headache. Additionally, we had a Sonicwall Pro 300 at the home office. It was more reliable, but I found out that it could only handle about 20 Mb/s of traffic. Since we needed to do backups on the servers on our DMZ, this was an obvious issue. I ended up working around it by forcing the DMZ port to 10 Mb/s. Also, its implementation of RIP was extremely flaky, which was an issue because some of our VPN sites had a frame relay backup. Without a reliable dynamic routing protocol, we had no way to fail over. Support was completely useless in admitting there was an issue with RIP.
My understanding is the newer SonicWall products have fixed all these issues, but it certainly left a bad taste in my mouth. When the name SonicWall comes up, I strongly push for Juniper Netscreen instead. They cost more, but you get a lot more features and better support in the same user-friendly interface. Cisco Routers and ASAs have outstanding reliability and performance too, although there is a learning curve.
My understanding is the newer SonicWall products have fixed all these issues, but it certainly left a bad taste in my mouth. When the name SonicWall comes up, I strongly push for Juniper Netscreen instead. They cost more, but you get a lot more features and better support in the same user-friendly interface. Cisco Routers and ASAs have outstanding reliability and performance too, although there is a learning curve.
2nd Jun 2009
Replies
most people do not check out the throughput of the devices they buy. As johnh points out some devices like SonicWall has a throughput limit. Symantic Gateway appliances [the old 200 and 300 series] had about the same. the higher end appliances all had 54mpbs throughput.
Even when consumer level routers all tout they have a certain speed, throughput is often less than that.
here is a znet article on some of the most commonly used consumer level routers and throughput measurement.
note the actual throughput measurements which often is less than the stated throughput or even stated router speed.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/reviews/coolgear/wireless/soa/Linksys-WRT300N-router/0,139023505,139254755,00.htm
Even when consumer level routers all tout they have a certain speed, throughput is often less than that.
here is a znet article on some of the most commonly used consumer level routers and throughput measurement.
note the actual throughput measurements which often is less than the stated throughput or even stated router speed.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/reviews/coolgear/wireless/soa/Linksys-WRT300N-router/0,139023505,139254755,00.htm
CG IT
2nd Jun 2009
