Microsoft TMG V Smoothwall Pros and cons (help/advice)

[PEO]

Hello, We are moving away from easynet therefore we are also looking at a more upto date solution other then a cachepilot. the two solutions we are interested in is Microsoft TMG and SmoothWall. Im interested to learn from you all who have used either of these two solutions.

 

servers 2008r2

 

client xp pro sp3 but will be moving over to win7 this summer

 

Cheers

[tom_newton]

We have had a few people switch to TMG (it's cheaper), and come back once they realise it doesn't offer as comprehensive filtering. Hopefully some folks on here will have less biased views Worth noting that TMG is also being end-of-lifed.

[glennda]

We are just moving away from LEA so this came up.

 

TMG

Pro's - Similar to ISA which is what we already use

Con's - Filtering not up to scratch/ Support is only via online/pay m$

 

Smoothie

Pro's Filtering/Support Top notch

Con's - costs more

[teejay]

We have a TMG box and a Smoothwall UTM. The Smoothwall is in a different league as far as filtering goes, also has much better reporting and the support on the whole is very good. It also generally does what it's told, unlike the TMG box where you have to sacrifice a chicken/goat/ipad to get it to actually do what you've told it to do.

The only area the TMG box wins is in having slightly more advanced reverse proxy facilities, so if you're publishing multiple internal websites across different web servers then TMG is better for that. Smoothwall have only just released reverse proxy as a beta, it works but doesn't have the same flexibility that TMG has.

We are basically decommissioning our TMG box as we can now do everything we need on the Smoothwall.

[cscott]

we were with Smoothwall and then moved to TMG about 18 months ago (as it was much cheaper) but have now moved back with Smoothwall about a month ago - I would highly recommend the Smoothwall UTM, we've just put in a UTM-3000 acting as web filter and firewall for our network (2000+ computers).

 

You may also want to read these regarding Microsoft's plans for TMG

 

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/window-on-windows/the-demise-of-threat-management-gateway-is-microsoft-backing-away-from-the-edge/

 

Deb Shinder Blog » Blog Archive » Death of TMG?

[PEO]

Thank you, I had attended a smoothwall meeting last thursday and had a full days experience with TMG on Friday. Smoothwall is for sure the better option by a mile. Thank you for your prompt responces, its really helped me make my mind up whats best for the school.