Lightspeed vs Smoothwall

[CyberNerd]

I think their solution is to increase the cost of support 3 fold.

 

Cost or number of support staff?

THey need to do it fast. April is approaching an I'm going to be looking more closely at lightspeed too.

[Gaz]

Cost, its gone from £300 to ~£1000 for support renewal

 

But I can only assume the extra cost is going towards recruiting more people.

[CyberNerd]

Cost, its gone from £300 to ~£1000 for support renewal

 

But I can only assume the extra cost is going towards recruiting more people.

 

The Lightspeed cost to resellers is circa £3 per user/device per year (I forget which contract 3 or 5 yrs possibly). How does that compare to smoothwall these days?

[frank_7]

I have been told £20 is for a lifetime licence of the device and there is a annual charge if required. Also, if using MDM in an educational environment Meraki does not work effectivley, as when I trialed it I had to enable all devices to connect to the App store breaching my AUP. The Lightspeed product has more control in this area.

[Eappariello]

Hi David,

 

Please go back to your partner, this sounds like a perpetual license the anual is much much lower.

 

 

I've previously (a couple of years ago) used SmoothWall, and we've just had a Lightspeed server installed here (replacing another server that just fell over dead one morning). The Lightspeed server seems resonable so far, if a little heavy-handed with filtering, and sites can be catagorised somewhat haphazardly - lots of Chinese language resources seem to be classed as "adult", for instance. Lightspeed uses a user client installable on workstations to give data about who is currently logged on to which machine (although you can have a web-based login too), and that user agent has made a couple of our Windows 7 machines bluescreen. It seems to install okay after reimaging, though, so maybe it's just some random incompatability with something else.

 

Smoothwall can be run as a virtual machine, so you don't have to run another dedicated bit of hardware, although Lightspeed does seem to do quite a nice line in mobile device management systems (I haven't tried it out yet, and it is a little pricy (£20) per device compared with Meraki's system (£0)).

[frank_7]

“We were an existing Smoothwall customer but had decided to look for another solution due to some issues we had been having when we came across the Lightspeed product after some research. We were slightly dubious as we hadn’t heard of the product or Lightspeed but decided to arrange a demonstration unit after hearing about its successes in the US plus the raft of features and level of filtering it claimed to offer.

 

Once received, a quick walk through with Lightspeed’s technical team and we were away.

 

We have been using the web filtering and SPAM filtering components of the suite ever since and have been blown away with the its ease of use via the intuitive user interface and the level of information it is providing us with.

 

The reporting features enable us to send search engine queries reports to e-safety staff, it provides us with logon and logoff details of users as well as the detailed web filtering, protocol and bandwidth usage all of which are easily drilled down into for more detailed information.

 

With Smoothwall we were constantly playing catch-up trying to stop students accessing proxy avoidance sites but since using the Lightspeed Solution this has been reduced dramatically, to the point where is his almost non existent.

 

The level of support available from Lightspeed has been faultless. Every support case has been resolved in a short space of time and they are always willing to help with any queries. The product is always evolving and growing with features that are requested by the user.

 

All in all I consider the Lightspeed to be a far superior product to Smoothwall in all respects and would happily advise anyone to take the plunge”

[Eappariello]

I will answer this and hope my posts dont get taken down by a Smoothwall MOD I would like to answer more questions about our product here, but most replies are taken as sales related so are taken down.

 

The agent gives realtime and rich information of which user is logged on where (there is an agent for thin client servers also), plus what groups, OU's computer name, computer OU etc. This means for school owned devices the filter always knows what policy should be applied transparently. For environments allowing personal devices "BYOD, BYOT"...did I miss any ?, the filter can be set to ask for authentication of "Unknown" devices. So, school owned devices authentication is transparent, personal devices have to authenticate before access (or get a defined default policy).

Add to this no proxy settings, or proxying in any form and BYOD is very easy.

 

Hope this helps explain the concept.

 

Simon

 

Interesting posts, I am going to trial Lightspeed too as I have had enough of the support at Smoothwall, its been mentioned lots on but about how bad its got but the simple case is that if the nice lady on the phone says that no one is available at the moment then its a 2 week wait for a response.

 

Didn't realise the MSI thing with lightspeed though, how does that live with BYOD filtering?

[Eappariello]

Some good discussion on here regarding filtering techniques.

 

I would be happy to explain how Lightspeed's URL DB is in conjunction with other features such as MyBigCampus (Discussed elsewhere on here), if anyone is interested, for comparison sake

 

Simon

[dhicks]

Please go back to your partner, this sounds like a perpetual license the anual is much much lower.

 

At BETT, I was told £5 per device per year or £20 per device for a perpetual license.

[midweek]

I'm a year in using Smoothwall and in my limited experience:

 

- Support - Good when you get them on the phone. They never, ever reply to a support portal request.

- Filtering and Firewall seem pretty good now that we've got if configured roughly how we want it. Had a horrendous time with https filtering and authentication on iPads and iMacs though which still isn't really resolved.

- Our UTM failed and they were pretty good at helping us to set up a 2nd box on an old server using a temp license key. Make sure you've got same day response on your contract though. We thought we had but didn't so it took ages to get our box shipped out to Germany and back.

- cost is more expensive than the Lightspeed though as I recall.

- reporting on the Smoothwall is clunky and doesn't always show URLs that you know have been browsed to. I'm told this is getting a complete revamp soon though.

 

Now my (brief) experience with the lightspeed rocket:

 

- had an online demo with US lightspeed sales and was very impressed by the product and agreed to give it a trial.

- Engineer turned up (late) and tried to install the lightspeed to cover our ICT Suite only. Couldn't do it.

- Told me it didn't work with VLANs (???!!!), said I should hook it up to a single PC to give it a go, then left.

- Tried hooking it up myself with limited help from their tech support but it wouldn't play ball fully.

 

So I can't really compare the lightspeed on a technical level or in a real world environment but if they can't even get the trial to work I wasn't about to move away from our Smoothy.

 

I saw a Fortinet install the other day though and that looked really good....

[RTFM]

Now my (brief) experience with the lightspeed rocket:

 

- had an online demo with US lightspeed sales and was very impressed by the product and agreed to give it a trial.

- Engineer turned up (late) and tried to install the lightspeed to cover our ICT Suite only. Couldn't do it.

- Told me it didn't work with VLANs (???!!!), said I should hook it up to a single PC to give it a go, then left.

- Tried hooking it up myself with limited help from their tech support but it wouldn't play ball fully.

 

So I can't really compare the lightspeed on a technical level or in a real world environment but if they can't even get the trial to work I wasn't about to move away from our Smoothy.

 

I saw a Fortinet install the other day though and that looked really good....

 

Strange, in what way would it need to deal with VLAN's? If it sits transparently between your core switch and your firewall I don't see what difference VLAN's would make? It's quite possible there is a big difference and I am showing my ignorance??

 

From my experience the support was good and completely remote, doesn't sound like you had much joy though

 

Another thing to add though that has come to mind about Lightspeed is the wiki, it is a good source of lots of information and guides

Edited February 13, 2013 by RTFM

[Eappariello]

VLANs 802.1q is supported by the transparent bridge.

 

Sorry you was told otherwise. We will endeavour to make sure this information has been given to all our partners.

 

Simon

[Jollity]

I am pleased this subject seems to have raised some interest.

 

I've previously (a couple of years ago) used SmoothWall, and we've just had a Lightspeed server installed here (replacing another server that just fell over dead one morning). The Lightspeed server seems resonable so far, if a little heavy-handed with filtering, and sites can be catagorised somewhat haphazardly - lots of Chinese language resources seem to be classed as "adult", for instance. Lightspeed uses a user client installable on workstations to give data about who is currently logged on to which machine (although you can have a web-based login too), and that user agent has made a couple of our Windows 7 machines bluescreen. It seems to install okay after reimaging, though, so maybe it's just some random incompatability with something else.

Thank you for sharing your experience, dhicks. Is your memory that Smoothwall's categorisation was noticeably better? If the cost were the same, which would you go for?

 

 

“We were an existing Smoothwall customer but had decided to look for another solution due to some issues we had been having when we came across the Lightspeed product after some research. We were slightly dubious as we hadn’t heard of the product or Lightspeed but decided to arrange a demonstration unit after hearing about its successes in the US plus the raft of features and level of filtering it claimed to offer.

Thank you to you too, Frank. One rather silly question: are you quoting someone else? I am confused by the speech marks around your post.

[plexer]

Client for telling it who's on like identd? Yuck.

 

Ben

[glennda]

Client for telling it who's on like identd? Yuck.

 

Ben

 

exactly what i thought...

[CyberNerd]

Client for telling it who's on like identd? Yuck.

 

Any sort of client sucks when it comes to filtering, utterly.

[antmanvolpe]

I have had demos for both Smoothwall, Barracuda, and Lightspeed. Of the three we are leaning toward the SmoothWall UTM-3000 coming from a Cisco ASA5510 firewall and iBoss 8550 content filter.

 

I found the feature set of the Lightspeed rather limited. I can not speak to support for either company, but most of the negative comments about Smoothwall seem to be centered around support.

 

I was hoping to ask what features other than support caused you to want to leave smoothwall or select LightSpeed over it?

[Eappariello]

Any sort of client sucks when it comes to filtering, utterly.

 

It's an option not mandatory, but it gives rich information that isn't available from a challenge or the IP headers.

[plexer]

It's an option not mandatory, but it gives rich information that isn't available from a challenge or the IP headers.

 

What additional information does it provide please?

 

Ben

[Eappariello]

What additional information does it provide please?

 

Ben

 

Real time login and logout information, distinguished names, user and computer OU info (handy for location based filtering), multiple IP info ( for clients having multiple IP's and IP4 plus IP 6), also lets us be aware of fast user switching if enabled.

Of course not everyone uses AD so there is also support for different ldap clients and a OS X version.

 

Probably stuff I have forgotten, you don't have to install it, but it gives nice detail, is <1mb invisible on the client itself.

 

Simon

[dhicks]

Is your memory that Smoothwall's categorisation was noticeably better?

 

That's my memory, yes, although of course that was a couple of years ago now in a different school. "Seemed better" could simply equate to "our users just didn't happen to run into as many problems / simply didn't use the Internet as much / just sighed and worked around the problem instead of actually telling me", but the Chinese language sites thing sticks out in my memory as something that Lightspeed seems bad at right at the moment. Both places, though, are private schools, with well-supervised classes and, importantly, no teenage boys. I imagine most web filtering products are built around the idea of stopping your average 15-year-old searching for pictures of naked women, and erring on the side of caution when catagorising sites as "adult" is probably understandable.

 

If the cost were the same, which would you go for?

 

Based on experience so far, I'd probably go for SmoothWall, although I see advantages in the way Lightspeed's system works. I'd be interested to know if you're planning a home-based hardware device we can sell on to parents. We get parents asking how they can implement web filtering at home, and I'd love to be able to tell them to simply plug a box in that would sync settings with the school system.

[rpmoore]

This is an interesting thread, and as the established web filtering market leader in UK education and LA markets it is my job to make sure Smoothwall exceeds our customer expectation from a product and service perspective. I have discussed the points raised in this threat regarding support reactiveness with our COO, who replies below. Both of us are contactable personally should you need to get in touch - we always welcome constructive feedback good or bad.

 

I'm always seeking to improve the quality and responsiveness of our Support to Customers and provide value for money to them, so it's a direct concern to me that some forum members are posting issues here about Smoothwall's support whilst others have enjoyed the level of service that they, and I, expect. It's well known that we have grown very significantly but that cannot become a reason why we falter in providing services to some customers. Empirically and anecdotally from your posts, support turnaround times are, on occasion, erratic so we are working continually to improve:-

 

• we are investing in additional Support staff and training, more will be in post by the end of March,

• some of you will be aware that our knowledge base has been completely re-written over recent months and is available via Smoothwall's Support portal to enable fast responses on known issues and FAQs,

• in response to customer input, new advisory services and enhanced training services are now launched

• all of our service agreements have been re-written and enhanced to provide more flexibility, choice and value for money for our Customers for the full life of your Smoothwall solution.

 

There's more to come but, in the immediate short term, my focus is to ensure that we deliver excellent service to all of our Customers.

Gary Pearson - Chief Operating Officer, Smoothwall.

[RTFM]

Whilst this is a discussion regarding Lightspeed and Smoothwall primarily, what do people feel about the Smoothwall firewall side of things? We've been trialling a sonicwall box for a few days, just wondered what people think of the Smoothwall side of it though

[glennda]

Whilst this is a discussion regarding Lightspeed and Smoothwall primarily, what do people feel about the Smoothwall firewall side of things? We've been trialling a sonicwall box for a few days, just wondered what people think of the Smoothwall side of it though

 

It does the job and fairly straight forward to configure. If you are looking at appliances tho also check out watchguards.

 

Depending on your setup you could also look at virtual firewall appliances.

[rpmoore]

Whilst this is a discussion regarding Lightspeed and Smoothwall primarily, what do people feel about the Smoothwall firewall side of things? We've been trialling a sonicwall box for a few days, just wondered what people think of the Smoothwall side of it though

 

Hi RTFM - I personally think that it currently compares well to mid market solutions such as SonicWALL, and we sell a lot of our UTM product, combining firewall with Guardian. However, we are currently redeveloping the firewall to include full Layer 7 analysis. Ultimately we will be able to identify and manage 000's of applications in a very granular manner - making us more comparable to the like of Palo Alto. This will launch in a couple of months.

 

While some other vendors are adding complimentary products (i.e. MDM, Desktop AV) to their core offerings, we believe in sticking to providing a great firewall with the best filtering on the market.

 

(If anyone wants further info on the new functionality please IM me)

 

Richard