Sophos Web Appliance Problems

[Darylrese]

Hi Guys,

 

The school i have just moved to run their own proxy which is Sophos Web Appliance. Since i have been there we have had several issues with the internet.

 

Sometimes it randomly blocks EVERYTHING for everyone, then reverts back to normal about 20mins later. Just recently internet has been very slow then grinds to a halt and again if you leave it half an hour, its all good again.

 

Any ideas where to start?

 

Many thanks in advance

[ANiceEnglishman]

We had a similar-sounding problem. Does the appliance's admin interface respond very slowly at the same web browsing grinds to a halt for users?

 

 

The appliance was overloaded and we fixed it by installing a second one for students leaving staff on the original one. As we have vmWare infrastructure and our Sophos licencing covers up to ten appliances it didn't cost a penny

[Darylrese]

Thank-you. Ours is actually a hardware appliance I believe, its not running on a virtual server. We have one of these in the server room:

 

[Mcshammer_dj]

how many users have you got using this box?

[Darylrese]

800 pupils and 100 staff

[ANiceEnglishman]

Here's a link to the specs for the various models of web appliances, showing the maximum recommended number of users and concurrent users. Which model do you have?

 

http://www.sophos.com/medialibrary/PDFs/factsheets/sophoswebappliancesdsna.pdf

[MatthewL]

I don't find these things very good, the powers be put them in at our place, firstly one that linked off the main one over the WAN, lasted less than 3 weeks before it got swapped out to a bigger better one but there is certainly performance issues with it still only around 10 of us on the network via the ADSL WAN. Used far better equipment else where, can't say that the Sophos one would be on the top of my list if I wanted one.