Smoothwall Question

[Quackers]

Were very seriously looking and moving away from the LA broadband due to years of annoyances.

 

We have been looking at Virgins Big Red internet as its pricing seems very good. Obviously we would need a router for it, can one of these Smoothwall Appliances be used for it?

 

As we need a plan for filtering and firewall, and i think i am right in thinking that a Smoothwall appliance box can do what i want? or will i need a router then the router going into the smoothwall box?

[zag]

Yeh we are doing the same (moving away from LA broadband)

 

You can put the smoothwall appliance in front of any router so it should work fine. The actual box has a port you can just plug in and it should start filtering.

 

I'm going to do it with our new VDSL line which is 30/8mbit

 

Smoothwall offer a firewall as well but I've found the standard BT supplied router is actually pretty good for that kind of thing.

 

Not bad for 55 quid a month anyway

 

EDIT: Just out of interest what does it cost for the virgin solution?

Edited March 16, 2011 by zag

[Quackers]

 

EDIT: Just out of interest what does it cost for the virgin solution?

 

When i phoned them, they said if you agree to 5 years, its £12,000 a year for "unmanaged" 100Megabit. No setup/install charge they said for Big Red too.

 

Still waiting for an official quote, but keep missing there phone call.

[tom_newton]

Yes, you will be able to get a Smoothwall appliance that does firewall and filtering all in one. I would always recommend a chat with one of our pre-sales engineers just to make sure you're 101% happy with the proposed setup though. If you could PM me your details I can get that set up.

[zag]

When i phoned them, they said if you agree to 5 years, its £12,000 a year for "unmanaged" 100Megabit. No setup/install charge they said for Big Red too.

 

Still waiting for an official quote, but keep missing there phone call.

 

Yeh its a high cost but I guess that's what you pay for dedicated connections.

 

I also got a quote from GlobalAXS who do dedicated fiber and that was very similar at 12k a year for a 3 year contract. They also offered a "sonicwall" appliance which was cheaper and "better" (there words not mine) than smoothwall but I haven't tested it myself.

 

Pretty impressed with BT infinity so far though, will have to do some more testing before making a final decision on what to move away to.

 

EDIT: forgot to add be carefull signing up to 5 year contracts, we should have consumer grade fiber in about 3 years that will dramatically bring down the cost of the corporate variants.

Edited March 16, 2011 by zag

[rpmoore]

I also got a quote from GlobalAXS who do dedicated fiber and that was very similar at 12k a year for a 3 year contract. They also offered a "sonicwall" appliance which was cheaper and "better" (there words not mine) than smoothwall but I haven't tested it myself..

 

As a subsidiary of a SonicWALL Gold Partner (M247) they would say that, wouldn't they?

 

SonicWALL is a great value proposition, and a fine firewall (used to work for them myself), just take the time to compare them to a proper dynamic content filter such as Guardian....

 

Richard

[Edu-IT]

I assume you work for SmoothWall then Richard.

 

Edit: Ah yes, LinkedIn answers all.

 

I also got asked if I want to look at Sonicwall so I may do, but, SmoothWall ticked every box for me and the feedback on here speaks for itself I think.

 

As Tom has said go for a web demo of Smoothwall. It was very interesting for me.

[rpmoore]

I assume you work for SmoothWall then Richard.

 

Edit: Ah yes, LinkedIn answers all.

 

Yes, I am the Sales Director at Smoothwall. My sig used to carry my details, but it has been a couple of years since I posted much on EG and for some reason the site seems to have forgotton my past history (maybe just as well!!)

 

Glad you got the web demo - let us know if you want a real box to look at.

 

Richard

[Zenden]

We have just left our LA and have gone with a 100MB line from GlobalAXS. we got it at a fantastic price. only 8500 per year with ADSL failover (feel free to correct me if i am not allowed to state actual figures on the forum). We have combined that with two Smoothwall UTM1000s (for redundancy/failover) and we are very very hapopy with the results. Give globalAXS a call and haggle over the price with them, i am sure you will get an unbeatable deal!

 

EDIT - forgot to mention, GlobalAXS also gave us 2U rackspace for an offsite backup server for free

Edited March 19, 2011 by Zenden