Credit where credit's due: Smoothwall Support are ace

[sonofsanta]

I've had a pretty horrendous week this week, and have spent most of it trying to track down internet gremlins. It has been the sort of week where I hate that we're wholly independent; 99% of the time, I love being able to do what we deem necessary, and be masters of our own destinies configurations, but this has been the 1% where I dearly, dearly wish there was someone above me to pass the buck unto.

 

Everything involved - Smoothwall, core switch, internet connection - has checked out individually all along, but something about the specific combination made the internet through the filter unusable. The sporadic clues I gathered were as confusing and contradictory as they were enlightening, and I spent all of Tuesday & Wednesday on the phone between Smoothwall and my ISP, unsure which was at fault, desperate for someone, anyone, to talk to, in the hopes they would have an idea and be able to magically fix what was incomprehensibly broken.

 

It does appear, however, to be at an end: I have run some 50 odd tests over the last two days without fault, where normally the problem pops up after 2 runs, so I am as confident as I can be that the situation is resolved, and that it turned out - in the end - to be a faulty config with our virtual firewall at the ISP's end. Smoothwall were, in the end, blameless, despite the problem being specific to that device and strongly implicating it.

 

Despite it being no fault of their own, Rob Wilson at support has spent probably 4 to 5 hours on the phone with me this week, has listened patiently to me detailing exactly why it has to be the Smoothie at fault, has patiently explained back why it isn't, has helped me test, diagnose and discard possibilities, and gone above and beyond in helping on an issue that wasn't - in the end - his to deal with.

 

So this is me saying thanks, to Rob specifically, and Smoothwall support in general. There was more than once this week I muttered the words "I hope it's the Smoothwall, so it's their support I get to talk to". You guys are ace

 

On a related note, anyone know how much it'd cost to trade-in an SWG-1200 for a new UTM device? My budget bid is due soon...

[witch]

Glad you sorted it in the end, @sonofsanta

That'll make for a better weekend

[sonofsanta]

Not half as glad as I am. I've never been so stumped by something, because I didn't even know which system I should be concentrating all my efforts on. If it hadn't gotten fixed on Wednesday evening, when I was on my final, desperate theory, I don't know what I'd have done from there. Quit my job and let some other sucker deal with it, probably.

 

What I'd give to be in a beer garden in this sunshine right now. I've run out of week before the week has.

[Tricky_Dicky]

Glad it's all worked out ok in the end.

What did the problem turn out to be?

[sonofsanta]

Apparently there were some web filtering rules on the Fortigate 50B, which when cleared out, fixed everything. Whether it was those, or something else that got cleared out/reset as part of the process, I don't know, but it's once again been a problem in a system I didn't control directly, so I think I need to bring the firewall in house as part of a Smoothwall UTM so I know what's going on with it. I'd rather be to blame and have the ability to fix problems of my own causing than be at the mercy of someone else's config.