DSP

For anybody who is considering iBoss vs Lightspeed I have tested both extensively on a 100Mb/s line with ~1,500 users. Our old appliance was a SonicWALL NSA 3600 but SSL traffic was starting to cause an issue on our line as DPI-SSL can only inspect over 1 CPU core. We had an iBoss running inline for a week but it simply couldn't cope with SSL inspection on all traffic (this is our default preference) - even when selective. iBoss support worked on a number of fixes but the CPU usage was simply through the roof and when any of the cores peaked at 100% we would see all connections dropped. The unit would crash and drop all connections each time it peaked at ~70Mb/s; We ended up going for a Lightspeed Rocket. It seems to run fine although it is configured as a proxy server as it cannot go in-line natively but the ease of use and reporting make up for this and I believe the next major build may support transparent in-line (please?!). Just my experience, feel free to give me a PM. We have had Smoothwall, Lightpseed, iBoss and SonicWALLS run live traffic for us.

We've currently got a NSA 3600 running on our own leased line (100 down/up) - got the DPI-SSL configs etc perfect as been in for 18 months now. The issue is DPI-SSL (https inspection) only utilises CPU core 1 (the control plane) and so gets hammered; EDIT: Also only supports inspecting 250 SSL connections and we currently quadrupedal that in pupils alone. Authentication is working fine with the SSO agent on 3 domain controllers - unknown users are challenged with a login prompt. The major flaw with SonicWALL (other than DPI-SSL that will be multi-core in the current months) is the Content Filter lists. We've had a number of dodgy sites (too many) through and the AppControl does not detect proxies like Glype even though they are listed. We've had a SmoothWall on trial and it did OK but it's not perfect and not user friendly at all in terms of administration. There is also a small but noticeable delay on internet access that was never there with the SonicWALL. Got a iBoss coming in for trial so the search continues!!

I am currently testing a SonicWALL 9200 from a NSA 3600. Have found it's taken a while to get right but after 18 months on the network it's running well with few issues. We recently got stung (I assume like many) with how we filter SSL with what seems to be many sites moving over to secure by default - thus the reason we've gone for a bigger SonicWALL for better DPI-SSL performance. It's currently enforcing safe search over SSL (many well established filters still don't do this very well) on all major search engines and having looked around at many other options I think we'll stick with our SonicWALL (as we've invested a lot of time getting the config right for our network). Interesting to see how others are coping with SSL filtering?

Just a quick update on this - there is no cost for this as it is part of Officer 365. Forefront customers have a subscription listed in 365 Administration panel.

Hello, Quick question. School with around 150 full time staff and 1,500 pupils. We recently moved from on-site ForeFront Protection for Exchange (2007) to the hybrid Exchange Online Protection (Exchange 2013 server in-house with EOP for relay and scanning etc). Last year, ForeFront covered Exchange Online Protection on our EES (Open Value Subscription Education Solutions). The Exchange specific costs came in at around £200 last year for 150 staff users and 1,500 pupils. Renewal is now up and we're being told the cost will be just short of £12k for Exchange / EOP! - part numbers; 312-04097 Exch Svr Std Lsa 1Y E Ap x1 (server) DS2-00001 Exchonlnpln2Opnfcltyshrdsvr E 1M (12 Months) x145 (staff) DR2-00001 Exchonlnpln2Opnstdntshrdsvr 1M Stdnt (12 Months) x1,240 (pupils) 381-04239 Microsoft Exchange Server Standard CAL x1,240 (pupils) I'm sure I've seen people mention EOP being part of EES (or very little cost if on EES) on Edugeek in the past. Am I being quoted/advised wrong or is this the new price model of EOP? Thanks in advance, Dan