You should notice all the features in the sections on the right that say "Licensed" - this thing sounds like (guess thats where "sonic" comes in) a pretty feature rich appliance, but look under the arrow...WELL that is like saying a Ford Pinto with power windows and AC is a high performance vehicle! -Sonicwall does not put the motor or framework in there to handle all these features properly - otherwise a network with 8 whole users on it should not max out the CPU on this "enterprise firewall" that could potentially be used by "unlimited" users if they upgraded the license.
You will see in the picture above that it has a 299mhz CPU and 128 mb of RAM - and it is performing all these tasks poorly:
- Firewalling and Routing
- Web Content filtering
- Intrusion Prevention System (IPS/IDS)
- Antivirus filtering
- Spam filtering (woops its not even on)
- Spyware blocking
- VPN
- Advanced logging and reporting
- Proxy server
- Network load balancing or DMZ
I would say our base Smpl-Route router does not even have the horse power to keep up with all that, and it has a 500mhz CPU, 256 mb RAM, and a dedicated VPN encryption accelerator - nearly double the capacity of the Sonicwall; yet at this size, we only enable 2-3 of the above features - if more are needed, we use the properly sized hardware for the task, and provide all of the above and more with no licensing fees.
And besides that - while our firewall might be capable of something we wont shuv it down your throat, when something else may do it better - for instance if you want spam filtering for your Exchange server - get the best, get ORF, its cheap and far more capable at this simple task - and there's still no annual fee.
So while the hardware sometimes (rarely) costs more than a Sonicwall, the annual fee is much less at $0, and it is the proper vehicle for your network's demands - rather than some spiffed out Pinto with a sweet dealer program - we don't get a cruise to the Bahamas for selling 50 SmplRoutes.
Man, I'm wondering if your assesment is fair? As a SW reseller I'm sure I wouldn't recommend a TZ100, given all the requirments above, as good fit with even just 8 users. Indeed, if you look at the SW product selector and check all the right boxes you'll find they bump you into the TZ210. Which is more than capable of handling all those services and probably up to 15 users. We also have to keep in mind your bandwidth. If you have more than 10MB down and your users are actively using sites like YouTube, along with their daily work, a TZ100 is a poor choice as it will most definitely become a bottleneck. Sonicwall would never recommend the configuration above. There are plenty of less expensive alternatives out there. If you pay attention to the literature, or listen to a SW partner, you'd know this isn't the right fit for your needs. And just because these features exist, it doesn't mean you should turn them all on. And no I don't work for SW. I'm just a reseller trying to get the other side of the story out there.
ReplyDelete