Smoothwall alternatives

[Steveduk]

Hi everyone,

 

Long time user of Smoothwall here but I've given up with them now.

 

What are you non-Smoothwall people using for internet filtering and firewalls? I'll be looking for something which can handle circa. 600 users on a 1/1Gbps connection with peak of about 600Mbps of filtered traffic.

 

Cheers

Steve

[Jcx500]

Sophos UTM/XG Would do the Job

[AliG]

Going from Smoothwall UTM to Sophos XG here with Wave9. Also moving internet provision from LEA to Wave9.

[VirtueTechnologies_Nick]

Hi Steve, I'd also recommend Sophos XG.

 

Happy to have a chat if you'd like some more info.

 

Thanks

Nick

[Chockster]

We moved from smoothwall to a sophos XG550 and haven't looked back. 1600 users on a 1/1Gbps connection and it doesn't break a sweat.

[supportman]

We moved from smoothwall to a sophos XG550 and haven't looked back. 1600 users on a 1/1Gbps connection and it doesn't break a sweat.

 

We're looking at renewing our smoothwall but the terrible support, poor feature updates and huge cost is putting us off renewing.

 

How do you find the Sophos solution compared to smoothwall? How does its web filtering work? Anything to look out for?

Edited January 17, 2020 by supportman

[Wave9_Lee]

We're looking at renewing our smoothwall but the terrible support, poor feature updates and huge cost is putting us off renewing.

 

How do you find the Sophos solution compared to smoothwall? How does its web filtering work? Anything to look out for?

 

Happy arrange a webex demo and a chat with one of our technicians any time,

 

cheers

 

Lee

[SchoolsBroadband]

Hi everyone,

 

Long time user of Smoothwall here but I've given up with them now.

 

What are you non-Smoothwall people using for internet filtering and firewalls? I'll be looking for something which can handle circa. 600 users on a 1/1Gbps connection with peak of about 600Mbps of filtered traffic.

 

Cheers

Steve

 

We use virtualised Fortinet and Netsweeper combo hosted in our data centres. The good thing over onsite boxes is that there's multiple of them and more importantly you can expand over 1Gbps without having to buy a new box. We take care of all the licensing etc and give you your own dedicated virtualised instance. Our largest inidivdual customer pumps about 2.5Gbit through it each day.

 

Thanks

 

Dave

[Reverend_Dan]

Got a Fortinet Fortigate 500D and Fortinet Analyser VM here for the past 3 years and its been pretty solid. Just about the renew it for another year at least. Realy nice going from an old Cisco ASA and a cachepilot to having an industry standard firewall with real support, youtube help videos and the cookbook help files on pretty much how to do any filtering or firewall issues. Was also a lot cheaper than smoothwall (at the time)

[Chockster]

We're looking at renewing our smoothwall but the terrible support, poor feature updates and huge cost is putting us off renewing.

 

How do you find the Sophos solution compared to smoothwall? How does its web filtering work? Anything to look out for?

 

Sophos was expensive, but given that we'd had a half term of trouble with smoothwall the senior team gave us the green light. Sophos is much easier to navigate and manage. Support has been great and they helped us get a High Availabilty Setup installed in two days of a half term, along with matching all of our smoothwall rules and config. User identification is a bit finicky in comparison with smoothwall, as it requires agents on the DCs, but the positives far outweigh the negatives.

[Opendium_Steve]

Long time user of Smoothwall here but I've given up with them now.

What are you non-Smoothwall people using for internet filtering and firewalls? I'll be looking for something which can handle circa. 600 users on a 1/1Gbps connection with peak of about 600Mbps of filtered traffic.

An on-premises Opendium UTM would do this well, and as pretty much all of our customers will vouch we do offer very good technical support in an era where a lot of suppliers seem to be struggling to keep the standard up. We do also do cloud hosted systems, but I would definitely err towards on-prem hardware for you.

 

Let me know if you'd like a quote or a demo. Myself and a colleague are also visiting Bett on Thursday, so if you're there we'd be happy to meet up for a chat - drop me a message, or find me on the Connect@Bett app (search for Opendium).

[ibpalle]

Lots of alternatives - some even fairly good I'd suggest, with obvious bias, to hold on a bit to see what we have to offer both by way of product options and improvements in support structure. 2020 looks to be very interesting Smoothwall wise.

[TechMonkey]

Lots of alternatives - some even fairly good I'd suggest, with obvious bias, to hold on a bit to see what we have to offer both by way of product options and improvements in support structure. 2020 looks to be very interesting Smoothwall wise.

 

Are you able to give us a time frame? I mean are announcements coming at BETT or is it an indeterminate time within the next 10 months? Unless there are project delays.

[ibpalle]

I can't give any timeframes or specific info as such. BETT will obviously have some announcements so follow that too. A lot of what's coming are refinements, pulling projects closer together as well as enhancements to all offerings - business processes as well as software.

[chris11256]

I'm very happy to recommend Palo Alto. We've got a VM-300, which according to the spec sheet offers put up to 2Gbps of throughput with thread protection enabled. We've had no problems whatsoever and it's been absolutely fantastic.

 

If you'd rather have a physical box there are some good education bundles based on the PA-820 & 850. But based on your traffic in box terms the 850 or better would be good.

[Securly_Marc]

If you're heading to Bett - come see Securly at Stand NQ41 - we can show you our safeguarding and filtering options. If not, i'd be happy to arrange a remote web demo and send over some schools who have made the switch to us as references!

 

Thanks,

 

Marc

[neonetman]

I'm starting to look at our firewall renewal (due next year). We are currently with Smoothwall, however I'm considering a move to Sophos XG. Has anyone got any decent comparisons or documentation to support the move? I'm happy to do the research myself, however I'm a great fan of not reinventing the wheel if someone has it to hand

[supportman]

I'm starting to look at our firewall renewal (due next year). We are currently with Smoothwall, however I'm considering a move to Sophos XG. Has anyone got any decent comparisons or documentation to support the move? I'm happy to do the research myself, however I'm a great fan of not reinventing the wheel if someone has it to hand

 

I've had both and must admit I thought the sophos was very good. I've just about had enough of smoothwalls non existant support and huge prices so will be looking at both Sophos XG and Fortigate at next renewal.

[Ratcliffepg]

I am just in the middle of the same process, Smoothwall has let me down too many times........

[computer_expert]

I'm starting to look at our firewall renewal (due next year). We are currently with Smoothwall, however I'm considering a move to Sophos XG. Has anyone got any decent comparisons or documentation to support the move? I'm happy to do the research myself, however I'm a great fan of not reinventing the wheel if someone has it to hand

 

Having had some experience with the Sophos 'We're working on it' XG, I'd avoid. The older UTM was much better. Plus the've recently annouced lots of job cuts (partly due to the pandemic): https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/04/sophos_100_redundancies_naked_security/

 

Have a look at Fortinet Fortigate as an alternative too.

[Wave9_Lee]

I'm starting to look at our firewall renewal (due next year). We are currently with Smoothwall, however I'm considering a move to Sophos XG. Has anyone got any decent comparisons or documentation to support the move? I'm happy to do the research myself, however I'm a great fan of not reinventing the wheel if someone has it to hand

 

Hi @neonetman

 

we are exclusively a Sophos XG house in terms of our schools internet and filtering offer. If you'd like any detailed product info, webex etc, then I'd be happy to arrange this.

 

Ref Computer experts comments, we have many happy customer who made the change from SG To XG. There is a change in approach, and if you're used to something, change is often bumpy. I think because we mainly offer a managed service, where we manage and make changes on the customers behalf (but also provide training and enable customers to make their own changes where comfortable) transition is usually pretty painless (whether this is from SG to XG or from another vendor to Sophos)

 

cheers

 

Lee

[ITGURU]

Centralised firewall off-site here for all schools connected to KCOM.

[computer_expert]

Ref Computer experts comments, we have many happy customer who made the change from SG To XG. There is a change in approach, and if you're used to something, change is often bumpy. I think because we mainly offer a managed service, where we manage and make changes on the customers behalf (but also provide training and enable customers to make their own changes where comfortable) transition is usually pretty painless (whether this is from SG to XG or from another vendor to Sophos)

 

I wanted to go XG, but we were using the letsencrypt feature of the old UTM at the time. Over 3 years later, and they are still 'considering it' ( https://ideas.sophos.com/forums/330219-xg-firewall/suggestions/13368852-let-s-encrypt-integration ) despite it being the most requested feature ( https://ideas.sophos.com/forums/330219-xg-firewall/filters/top ).

 

After playing around with it at home, it wasn't up to par then (a few years ago). When looking for a new home firewall last year, I gave it another go, and yes it had improved since I last tried it but isn't quite there yet in my eyes. I will give Sophos credit for the way they dealt with the recent SQL injection vulnerability (and subsequent RCE) though.

[Opendium_Steve]

For all the folks wanting on-prem boxes but are having support problems, I'd just like to point at our Opendium UTM and Opendium Web Gateway appliances. Pretty much all of our customers will tell you our support is second to none (a 97% annual customer retention rate can't be wrong

[supportman]

For all the folks wanting on-prem boxes but are having support problems, I'd just like to point at our Opendium UTM and Opendium Web Gateway appliances. Pretty much all of our customers will tell you our support is second to none (a 97% annual customer retention rate can't be wrong

 

Took a quick look at the website, but couldnt see any screenshots or pictures of the apliances. It would be good to have some more info as I guess there are a few of us looking for reasonably costed Smoothwall alternatives.