TechMonkey Posted January 16, 2015 Posted January 16, 2015 I've heard lots of good things about it and we're running express it as a firewall/router but not filtering. My preference is for appliances like next gen firewalls like the sophos UTM or PaloAlto, but i'm pretty sure i'm in the minority on this... Can I ask what makes those two options next gen compared to Smoothwall?
TechBod Posted January 16, 2015 Author Posted January 16, 2015 Genuinely appreciate the time everyone has taken to answer my questions. Much appreciated.
muppet Posted January 16, 2015 Posted January 16, 2015 When it works it's brilliant.....But we've had nothing but problems over the last 10 months or so. One of the updates brought the whole system to a grinding halt, the support team were very quick in helping us getting things back up and running, then the next update did exactly the same thing again!!! We finally managed to get things working again but yet again we had an issue with the next update. Once that was fixed things seemed to be ok...but we have noticed an increase in the time it takes to load pages....but as it was working we left it as it was. Then last week whilst just carrying out a periodic check I noticed that we hadn't had an update in ages so contacted support.....apparently we had been put on the update blacklist but hadn't been told. Now that is fixed we're having unauthenticated IP errors sporadically across the network. I know that there is a lot of love for Smoothwall on here (when it works I love it) but I thought you should know that it's not all good.
Arreks Posted January 16, 2015 Posted January 16, 2015 I've never really needed what they offer to be honest. I suppose the UTM is kinda cool but I can't justify their prices for it.
Moohorse Posted January 16, 2015 Posted January 16, 2015 I'm glad there are so many people here that are having a great experience with Smoothwall. Sadly, for me - I'm sorry to say that I haven't. Webpages have been incredibly slow to load on workstations around the school. You can wait up to 30 seconds at times for a page to appear. Bypassing the Smoothwall, and the issue goes away. For something that is a critical box, the support we've received over the time that we've had it hasn't been great. Recently, an issue occurred which meant that we were unable to provide any filtered internet connection through the Smoothwall to our pupils or staff for two days. You can imagine the number of complaints we had to deal with in the office. In the end we resolved the issue on our own as it just felt like we were weren't a priority for Smoothwall support. We had to do something. Two days without connectivity. Two days with little movement on the support ticket. I seem to recall that when we first got the box, we just ended up putting it in the rack and configuring it ourselves. I wasn't involved in that stage of things, and I keep meaning to ask whether we should have received some support in setting it up, or whether that was an additional option at cost that we didn't buy. Just recently, trying to use NearPod in school - the drawing features are being blocked by the Smoothwall. We've followed all the advice from NearPod in trying to unblock the required sites and configuring the Smoothwall, but it still doesn't work. It does on other sites that don't use Smoothwall as a proxy, and is fine from home where there isn't any proxy in place. It's got the be the Smoothwall. Any fix on this, support? Still waiting... (other than the response that it is a NearPod issue) The web interface on the Smoothwall to manage it is just poor. Imagine if you were new to the device and wanted to do something simple, such as block or unblock a site. Nothing intuitive. We also hold off on updating the Smoothwall box as the updating process has killed it a few times before. I went to visit the Smoothwall stand at BETT a few years ago, and I stood around for a while waiting for a few people to become free to talk to me, but as soon as anyone was, I was ignored. Or they went off to talk to someone else that they knew. So, regrettably, the sum of all this means that my personal experience of Smoothwall isn't great. Glad other people are happy with it, though.
SovietRussia Posted January 16, 2015 Posted January 16, 2015 It has been a real positive experience so far, its easy to use once you know how!
BFCIT Posted January 16, 2015 Posted January 16, 2015 Another pro-smoothwaller here, great product, diligent and helpful support team. Does exactly what we need and enables us filtered https Google use in school through the use of a man in the middle cert - not sure many other filter companies are offering this!
john Posted January 16, 2015 Posted January 16, 2015 I'm glad there are so many people here that are having a great experience with Smoothwall. Sadly, for me - I'm sorry to say that I haven't. Webpages have been incredibly slow to load on workstations around the school. You can wait up to 30 seconds at times for a page to appear. Bypassing the Smoothwall, and the issue goes away. For something that is a critical box, the support we've received over the time that we've had it hasn't been great. Recently, an issue occurred which meant that we were unable to provide any filtered internet connection through the Smoothwall to our pupils or staff for two days. You can imagine the number of complaints we had to deal with in the office. In the end we resolved the issue on our own as it just felt like we were weren't a priority for Smoothwall support. We had to do something. Two days without connectivity. Two days with little movement on the support ticket. I seem to recall that when we first got the box, we just ended up putting it in the rack and configuring it ourselves. I wasn't involved in that stage of things, and I keep meaning to ask whether we should have received some support in setting it up, or whether that was an additional option at cost that we didn't buy. Just recently, trying to use NearPod in school - the drawing features are being blocked by the Smoothwall. We've followed all the advice from NearPod in trying to unblock the required sites and configuring the Smoothwall, but it still doesn't work. It does on other sites that don't use Smoothwall as a proxy, and is fine from home where there isn't any proxy in place. It's got the be the Smoothwall. Any fix on this, support? Still waiting... (other than the response that it is a NearPod issue) The web interface on the Smoothwall to manage it is just poor. Imagine if you were new to the device and wanted to do something simple, such as block or unblock a site. Nothing intuitive. We also hold off on updating the Smoothwall box as the updating process has killed it a few times before. I went to visit the Smoothwall stand at BETT a few years ago, and I stood around for a while waiting for a few people to become free to talk to me, but as soon as anyone was, I was ignored. Or they went off to talk to someone else that they knew. So, regrettably, the sum of all this means that my personal experience of Smoothwall isn't great. Glad other people are happy with it, though. I would suggest @tom_newton could assist you here as sounds like something is slipping through the net. Tom I am sure will pop along now I have poked him here and see if he can assist etc...
JRowley Posted January 16, 2015 Posted January 16, 2015 Back when we had it forced upon us by the LA we found it horrendously complex, needlessly so, it claimed AD integration but actually you had to manually import user accounts from CSV which it would then query LDAP against to determine permissions. We dropped it within weeks, sold the box and used Forefront instead. Now we are with virgin we have a Palo Alto firewall.
sonofsanta Posted January 16, 2015 Posted January 16, 2015 Back when we had it forced upon us by the LA we found it horrendously complex, needlessly so, it claimed AD integration but actually you had to manually import user accounts from CSV which it would then query LDAP against to determine permissions. We dropped it within weeks, sold the box and used Forefront instead. Now we are with virgin we have a Palo Alto firewall. Not sure what went wrong there but it's had proper LDAP integration from the word go for us, over 4 years ago now. It used to use NTLM, now uses Kerberos and is better than ever.
JRowley Posted January 16, 2015 Posted January 16, 2015 Not sure what went wrong there but it's had proper LDAP integration from the word go for us, over 4 years ago now. It used to use NTLM, now uses Kerberos and is better than ever. No idea, I tried contacting the LA, Smoothwall and eventually another school in the area pointed us towards the CSV route, just gave up on the whole thing, if Smoothwall's own support couldn't get it working that was enough for us. Left a bad taste in our mouths, wont touch it again. They actually contacted us recently because they believed we were still one of their customers, had to laugh at that.
Mr_Jiminy Posted January 16, 2015 Posted January 16, 2015 Been using it here for 5 years on a white box without any real issues, well until iPads and BYOD came along How did the iOS and BYOD make a difference?
caffrey Posted January 16, 2015 Posted January 16, 2015 How did the iOS and BYOD make a difference? It's not just IOS I've found blocking apps to be haphazard and the traffic cannot easily be monitored, also VPN's are a huge issue here and there appears to be nothing we can do about it - I tried the layer 7 module but it seemed to not make a difference. I could block ports but skype gets used now and again. There's a few threads on this but they never really got resolved. They've been promising a new report system for years now too
Patrick Posted January 16, 2015 Posted January 16, 2015 We've always stuck with county filtering. We are on lightspeed now. I've never even though of using anything else, which worries me slightly as i might be missing something you guys are not..
RobD Posted January 16, 2015 Posted January 16, 2015 I have lightspeed and although I didnt like it at first I'm really into it now. Does some great stuff like different access lists for different groups at different times of the day so for example when the boarders get back to their room they have facebook but dont in the day etc etc.
TechMonkey Posted January 16, 2015 Posted January 16, 2015 They've been promising a new report system for years now too The new reporting system is in, well the backend is. Came in the big update last year.
Cache Posted January 16, 2015 Posted January 16, 2015 We've always stuck with county filtering. We are on lightspeed now. I've never even though of using anything else, which worries me slightly as i might be missing something you guys are not.. I suppose it depends which LA you are in. Lancs seems to have had a central filter with a bit more devolved control for a while, cumbria has tended to be a global filter which we can put requests into to be blocked/unblocked with a few less restrictive options available. at the moment we're on the less restrictive option with Smoothwall sat in front of it to tighten parts of it back up.
tom_newton Posted January 17, 2015 Posted January 17, 2015 Back when we had it forced upon us by the LA we found it horrendously complex, needlessly so, it claimed AD integration but actually you had to manually import user accounts from CSV which it would then query LDAP against to determine permissions. We dropped it within weeks, sold the box and used Forefront instead. Now we are with virgin we have a Palo Alto firewall. You are thinking of a different product - we have never had ad import from csv
tom_newton Posted January 17, 2015 Posted January 17, 2015 I'm glad there are so many people here that are having a great experience with Smoothwall. Sadly, for me - I'm sorry to say that I haven't. Webpages have been incredibly slow to load on workstations around the school. You can wait up to 30 seconds at times for a page to appear. Bypassing the Smoothwall, and the issue goes away. For something that is a critical box, the support we've received over the time that we've had it hasn't been great. Recently, an issue occurred which meant that we were unable to provide any filtered internet connection through the Smoothwall to our pupils or staff for two days. You can imagine the number of complaints we had to deal with in the office. In the end we resolved the issue on our own as it just felt like we were weren't a priority for Smoothwall support. We had to do something. Two days without connectivity. Two days with little movement on the support ticket. I seem to recall that when we first got the box, we just ended up putting it in the rack and configuring it ourselves. I wasn't involved in that stage of things, and I keep meaning to ask whether we should have received some support in setting it up, or whether that was an additional option at cost that we didn't buy. Just recently, trying to use NearPod in school - the drawing features are being blocked by the Smoothwall. We've followed all the advice from NearPod in trying to unblock the required sites and configuring the Smoothwall, but it still doesn't work. It does on other sites that don't use Smoothwall as a proxy, and is fine from home where there isn't any proxy in place. It's got the be the Smoothwall. Any fix on this, support? Still waiting... (other than the response that it is a NearPod issue) The web interface on the Smoothwall to manage it is just poor. Imagine if you were new to the device and wanted to do something simple, such as block or unblock a site. Nothing intuitive. We also hold off on updating the Smoothwall box as the updating process has killed it a few times before. I went to visit the Smoothwall stand at BETT a few years ago, and I stood around for a while waiting for a few people to become free to talk to me, but as soon as anyone was, I was ignored. Or they went off to talk to someone else that they knew. So, regrettably, the sum of all this means that my personal experience of Smoothwall isn't great. Glad other people are happy with it, though. Give me a call, or pm me, I'd really like to get to know about the issues you have had
Blue_Cookeh Posted January 17, 2015 Posted January 17, 2015 Another pro-smoothwaller here, great product, diligent and helpful support team. Does exactly what we need and enables us filtered https Google use in school through the use of a man in the middle cert - not sure many other filter companies are offering this! Most commercial solutions do nowadays!
tom_newton Posted January 17, 2015 Posted January 17, 2015 The new reporting system is in, well the backend is. Came in the big update last year. Yes, it did - we intend to give the frontend some improvements during 2015 as well.
tom_newton Posted January 17, 2015 Posted January 17, 2015 It's not just IOS I've found blocking apps to be haphazard and the traffic cannot easily be monitored, also VPN's are a huge issue here and there appears to be nothing we can do about it - I tried the layer 7 module but it seemed to not make a difference. I could block ports but skype gets used now and again. There's a few threads on this but they never really got resolved. They've been promising a new report system for years now too Skype's tricky - it is essentially p2p vpn, so using skype and blocking vpn makes for a difficult combination. Blocking of apps is possible - though many of them use aws backends, so you might find MDM a help there. Happy to have a chat - my DDI is in my sig as always, and I will be at BETT Wed/Thu (my other product-y colleagues will be there when i'm not, and there's always someone tech about) 1
JRowley Posted January 19, 2015 Posted January 19, 2015 You are thinking of a different product - we have never had ad import from csv It was a smoothwall firewall, on a smoothwall server provided by county, branded with the smoothwall name. I am definitely not thinking of any other product, thank you.
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