Replacing Smoothwall

[Sheridan]

I'm going to move from Smoothwall - after being pretty happy with them for years I'm sick of the poor support and the changes to the hardware.

 

So I'm after some opinions on replacements - we need the following in a replacement:

- cloud filtering

- support for 2000 users

- at least 6 ethernet ports for connection to various LAN/VLANs etc

- web filter and firewall

 

I know there's a few UTMs out there but I'm hoping to keep this within the same sort of budget as the previous smoothwall, so any advice would be helpful?

[Meldrew]

I know it doesn't fulfil all of your requirements by any means, but we're also very unhappy with Smoothwall at the moment and are interested in Securly. You'd need a firewall too, obviously, but that's where we're likely to be heading.

 

Meldrew

[Sheridan]

I've only had a brief look at Securly in the past, but it seems to be popular.

 

I think smoothwall are losing their place in the Edu market, no one is happy with them at the moment! Most of the secondary schools around here have ditched them or are planning to.

[lmrogers]

Give @Wave9_Lee a shout. He's recently helped me move away from Smoothwall and the guys over at Wave9 have been solid.

[caffrey]

I'm in the same boat but not with Smoothwall

 

Considering a PFSense box for firewall and securly, that or the only other option is Sophos ?

[markberry]

I'm going to move from Smoothwall - after being pretty happy with them for years I'm sick of the poor support and the changes to the hardware.

 

Not an answer to your question but I'm interested to know what sort of issues schools are seeing? We've been using Smothwall for over 10 years now as a whole local authority and the product has always been one of the best on the market. At the start of the 1st lockdown Smoothwall worked closley with us to get remote filtering working and the support has always been pretty good on the rare occasion we've needed.

 

Interested to know the issues as we're just about to tender for our new regional broadband contract.

[Jaan]

We have Sophos XG here along with its managed wifi module, love it. We also have the AV client on our pcs..... staff get a free premium independent version year on year also for personal use which is nice.

[ITGURU]

I've inherited a site with a smoothwall box and support is terrible! The box froze one day, LCD stops cycling through the information, rebooted it, contacted support and they said there probably won't be any logs now i've rebooted it! How do you get logs off a frozen box?! Took a week for them to reply to me saying can we arrange a support session for next week ?!?!?! So I should have waited and not have internet for 2 weeks before they tell me to reboot it?!

 

At the other sites we used Censornet - works 100% reliable - 2 VM's for authentication load balanced/failover but all filter rules etc are cloud based. Also use for BYOD

 

No in-line hardware box required, so removes the issues for a in-line device failing taking out the internet and site to site connections!

 

Also inherited Lightspeed sites before with same problem - internal HDD failed causing a problem as in-line solution again.

 

For reliability don't go for an in-line box, take WAN straight to your CORE network and clients points to a software solution hosted on a VM.

Edited May 28, 2021 by ITGURU

[Lightspeed_Shaun]

Hi all,

 

I'd be happy to meet and discuss your outstanding requirements.

 

Feel free to drop me an email and we can discuss how the Lightspeed Systems solutions suite can help filter and protect your students - [email protected]

 

In the mean time please see our United Learning Trust | Case Study and solution overview below:

 

Lightspeed Filter

 

Lightspeed Alert (Safeguarding)

 

I look forward to connecting.

 

Shaun Phillips

Edited May 28, 2021 by Lightspeed_Shaun

[Sheridan]

I think Sophos is the next best UTM from what I've heard. I used to love Smoothwall but the support is pretty much useless now, and they seems to be downgrading the specs of their UTMs compared to previous models

 

We still want onsite as we need a firewall as well, and have several 'guest' LANs in use as well.

[Grey-gear]

One web Filter I have used in the past is Fortinet's Fortigate. Was Okay to use, only moved away from it as the school I worked at became part of a trust and dropped it during the move over.

[Sheridan]

Fortigate looked good the time we last renewed our smoothwall, but it was quite a bit more expensive, but that was nearly 3 years ago so maybe close these days

[lmrogers]

I think Sophos is the next best UTM from what I've heard. I used to love Smoothwall but the support is pretty much useless now, and they seems to be downgrading the specs of their UTMs compared to previous models

 

We still want onsite as we need a firewall as well, and have several 'guest' LANs in use as well.

 

I put in a Sophos XG over Easter break and have to say its much better than Smoothwall. It is easier to understand what is going on and configure. The log view is brilliant for troubleshooting. I'm in the process of getting Sophos Endpoint protection and configuring Synchronised Security.

[Sheridan]

I put in a Sophos XG over Easter break and have to say its much better than Smoothwall. It is easier to understand what is going on and configure. The log view is brilliant for troubleshooting. I'm in the process of getting Sophos Endpoint protection and configuring Synchronised Security.

 

Do you mind me asking how much this cost you? Sophos XG was impressive the last time I demo'd it but the smoothwall beat it on price (not massively it has to be said)

[Ratcliffepg]

Smoothwall..... terrible... lightspeed rocket solid !!

[Sheridan]

I'm also thinking about splitting the UTM into seperate firewall and filters as well, as it gives me more options - and I'd expect the firewall to have a slightly longer lifespan - plus it means we're splitting the support

[Wave9_Lee]

Do you mind me asking how much this cost you? Sophos XG was impressive the last time I demo'd it but the smoothwall beat it on price (not massively it has to be said)

 

I'd be happy to send you some example pricing, no problem. It depends on the modules you licence and the size of the appliance, but we can generally beat other UTMs for price. You can buy outright or take it as an annual charge and include our co-managed services if preferred, which spreads the cost and gives you additional support resource to call on.

 

Alternatively, as requirements are moving more off-site, we offer a hybrid option with Lighstpeed (cloud/agent) based filtering combined with managed Sophos Firewall.

 

Ref a previous comment, on-prem Sophos is very reliable in our experience, with probably 2 faulty boxes over the last 3 years and 500 customer. Both were replaced either the same day or next day with a pre-configured/built replacement for no charge. An on-premise solution, from a connectivity and UTM point of view, give much more flexibility in my opinion. Both in terms of access to make changes, see network activity, cyber essentials and network security and respond to changing needs, but also in terms of the ISP chosen - it makes you completely ISP agnostic, meaning you can get the best price in the market at that point and not be tied in to a single provider. My two pence!

[maark]

From experience I would recommend onsite Sophos XG

[MYK-IT]

Another vote here for SophosXG.

 

We were originally going to buy outright, but after speaking with @Wave9_Lee we ended up getting it cheaper via a 3-year managed solution but it still gave us the capability to manage it ourselves, with the knowledge of having support from both Wave9 and Sophos too. Combined with FastVue (that we had previously used with SonicWall) for reporting and realtime alerting etc.

 

We went with higher spec XG appliances (active/passive) than what was originally suggested; only as I wanted to ensure it could cope with (future) demand. Predominantly, DPI-SSL filtering, as we had serious performance issues with SonicWall. Which paid off as we've recently upgraded (again using @Wave9_Lee) to a 1Gbps Leased Line (from 100mbps).

 

Oh, we renewed our Sophos Endpoint Security at the time too with @Wave9_Lee... Allowing us to pay annually (despite being a 3-year term) which kept our Finance Department happy (if that is ever possible!).

[Meldrew]

Not an answer to your question but I'm interested to know what sort of issues schools are seeing? We've been using Smothwall for over 10 years now as a whole local authority and the product has always been one of the best on the market. At the start of the 1st lockdown Smoothwall worked closley with us to get remote filtering working and the support has always been pretty good on the rare occasion we've needed.

 

Interested to know the issues as we're just about to tender for our new regional broadband contract.

 

Our issue at the moment is that Internet access stops completely for about 15 mins at a time one or twice a day, S10 appliance on dual 330Mb FTTP. Not particularly at busy times either. Over the space of a fortnight: raise a support call, no response. Chiivy, no response. CEO at this point on the warpath. Call the urgent support line - voicemail. No callback. Raise escalation via various methods, eventually get a response. Turns out the box they sold us isn't good enough. The HDD's in it are so poor, it can't keep up. Been shipped new drives now, didn't give us the ISO to rebuild from. Chivvied, no response. Chivved again, promised a call back, no call back. Eventually after escalating again, got ISO & instructions. Have to take down Internet to do a full rebuild, etc, likely half a day of downtime (Tuesday's job).

 

We told them our setup when we were buying it, so why sell us an under powered box to begin with. Personally not convinced that the new drives will make any difference, but we'll see.

 

Meldrew.

[Primus]

Our issue at the moment is that Internet access stops completely for about 15 mins at a time one or twice a day, S10 appliance on dual 330Mb FTTP. Not particularly at busy times either. Over the space of a fortnight: raise a support call, no response. Chiivy, no response. CEO at this point on the warpath. Call the urgent support line - voicemail. No callback. Raise escalation via various methods, eventually get a response. Turns out the box they sold us isn't good enough. The HDD's in it are so poor, it can't keep up. Been shipped new drives now, didn't give us the ISO to rebuild from. Chivvied, no response. Chivved again, promised a call back, no call back. Eventually after escalating again, got ISO & instructions. Have to take down Internet to do a full rebuild, etc, likely half a day of downtime (Tuesday's job).

 

We told them our setup when we were buying it, so why sell us an under powered box to begin with. Personally not convinced that the new drives will make any difference, but we'll see.

 

Meldrew.

 

The new drives make an enormous difference and fixed the issue we had with our failover S10.

[robk]

We had a similar issue with our new S10, new drives made the world of difference. That and not using the management NIC for internet traffic.

[markberry]

Our issue at the moment is that Internet access stops completely for about 15 mins at a time one or twice a day, S10 appliance on dual 330Mb FTTP. Not particularly at busy times either. Over the space of a fortnight: raise a support call, no response. Chiivy, no response. CEO at this point on the warpath. Call the urgent support line - voicemail. No callback. Raise escalation via various methods, eventually get a response. Turns out the box they sold us isn't good enough. The HDD's in it are so poor, it can't keep up. Been shipped new drives now, didn't give us the ISO to rebuild from. Chivvied, no response. Chivved again, promised a call back, no call back. Eventually after escalating again, got ISO & instructions. Have to take down Internet to do a full rebuild, etc, likely half a day of downtime (Tuesday's job).

 

We told them our setup when we were buying it, so why sell us an under powered box to begin with. Personally not convinced that the new drives will make any difference, but we'll see.

 

Meldrew.

 

That support experience doesn't sound good at all. I have to say we've never experienced an issue like that with support. As for the drives, they will make a huge difference. We've had ours replaced to resolve a different issue and the performance difference was noticable.

 

As for the process of replacing them, we did it by replacing one drive and support initiated a rebuild on the new drive overnight, then the day after we replaced the 2nd drive and again support initiated the rebuild on that drive during the night. We had no downtime for end users.

[malware]

+1 for Lightspeed.

[ibpalle]

Obligatory +1 for staying with Smoothwall. Take a look at some of the new cloud filter and safeguard management and monitor software - the full package of options may sway you to stay with us for a bit longer.