Thanks, but it's time to go..

[sky-knight]

Right down to drop shipping drives and eating the cost to cover warranties...

SSD tech... what crap.

Anyway, I've got some fun stories about Sonicwall. My mere presence has the nasty tendency to cause the router to fry.

Oddly enough most of my support customers that use Untangle Premium were Sonicwall customers before. UT support may keep bankers hours, and they make their mistakes... but they are infinitely better than some clueless Indian in a call center.

Furthermore, have you run a port scan on the exterior of a Sonicwall? There's an SSH backdoor... Untangle has an IRC back door, but that is turned on and off with a tick-box.

I'll leave Instagate, Watchguard, Firebox, Threatwall, and Bluecoat out of this discussion because... well I'm not happy with them all.

I used to build my own custom firewalls on OpenBSD because of the insanity cause by those vendors. Have you ever seen the look on a customer's face when you install a "Linux box" at the edge of their network and show them a nice report of all the crap that one of those boxes lets through? This specific client had their entire network infected by a Chinese trojan and the Threatwall / Instagate combination didn't even have a clue it was there. Yet they lost internet connectivity every day at 5pm thanks to the bug firing up and moving illegal software and porn around.

I had to reformat that entire network in one shot... Untangle isn't perfect but because it lets me under the hood I have all the tools in the world to troubleshoot ANYTHING network related. It hands me stuff I can't get with high end Cisco equipment. For "free".

Anyway, I believe Untangle has shown some interest in doing the cloud based thing to get that price down. The future will bring many options I'm sure. Because, more than anything else, that's what I've seen Untangle be about since the beginning... Options.

No vendor lockin, just tools and performance.

[hescominsoon]

SSD's work when properly supported....i don't think the current 9.1x kernels supports TRIM yet..dmorris?

[hescominsoon]

it also depends on the SSD. If you aren't using Intel or OCZ you're taking a huge chance on how well the drive is going to work.

[hescominsoon]

Originally Posted by sky-knight

Right down to drop shipping drives and eating the cost to cover warranties...

SSD tech... what crap.

Anyway, I've got some fun stories about Sonicwall. My mere presence has the nasty tendency to cause the router to fry.

Oddly enough most of my support customers that use Untangle Premium were Sonicwall customers before. UT support may keep bankers hours, and they make their mistakes... but they are infinitely better than some clueless Indian in a call center.

Furthermore, have you run a port scan on the exterior of a Sonicwall? There's an SSH backdoor... Untangle has an IRC back door, but that is turned on and off with a tick-box.

I'll leave Instagate, Watchguard, Firebox, Threatwall, and Bluecoat out of this discussion because... well I'm not happy with them all.

I used to build my own custom firewalls on OpenBSD because of the insanity cause by those vendors. Have you ever seen the look on a customer's face when you install a "Linux box" at the edge of their network and show them a nice report of all the crap that one of those boxes lets through? This specific client had their entire network infected by a Chinese trojan and the Threatwall / Instagate combination didn't even have a clue it was there. Yet they lost internet connectivity every day at 5pm thanks to the bug firing up and moving illegal software and porn around.

I had to reformat that entire network in one shot... Untangle isn't perfect but because it lets me under the hood I have all the tools in the world to troubleshoot ANYTHING network related. It hands me stuff I can't get with high end Cisco equipment. For "free".

Anyway, I believe Untangle has shown some interest in doing the cloud based thing to get that price down. The future will bring many options I'm sure. Because, more than anything else, that's what I've seen Untangle be about since the beginning... Options.

No vendor lockin, just tools and performance.

Exactly.. I've downed many of these "routers" using simple tools on backtrack..not even the advanced stuff.

[mooseracing]

Commenting from the SMB side, I didn't want to spend the money on the Premium subscription but for me:

The simplicity of configuration vs our current Cisco router, another VPN device, and at least more bandwidth needed, the subscription costs paid pretty much for itself.

I can't get this good of reporting and mgmt from multiple devices, I also can't touch many devices for as long as I can with Untangle and just come back without screwing it up when changing things.

The biggest thing for me was that it just works and I spend alot less time making changes and troubleshooting them compared to Cisco, use the premium package for awhile and you wonder what you did without it.

For a jack of all trades, I want easy things that work that I don't have to memorize.

[sky-knight]

Originally Posted by hescominsoon

it also depends on the SSD. If you aren't using Intel or OCZ you're taking a huge chance on how well the drive is going to work.

Crucial, Corsair, Kingston, Micron, and OCZ...

They all fail at the same rates, check your warranty reports. The only name out there that doesn't is Intel, and those things cost more than the entire appliance in most cases.

In short, SSD tech is junk, but I'm stuck using it to meet price points. Fortunately, they do live at least a year in most cases. Jim and I spoke this morning, and due to the way these devices appear to be failing. We're no longer offering a "fan-less" device. The SSDs appear to be cooking... slowly. Anyone with one of my fan-less units is advised to pull the access panel off, attach the fan to the pin header, reboot the unit and turn on the thermal fan controls so it stays relatively silent. SSDs deployed in our other units with active cooling have shown ZERO returns... I don't think that's an accident.

I'm still trying to figure out how to make an official advisory out of this. But right now my health is dead... again. So I'm just drifting from thing to thing and doing what I can.

[joec2000]

Originally Posted by sky-knight

Crucial, Corsair, Kingston, Micron, and OCZ...

They all fail at the same rates, check your warranty reports. The only name out there that doesn't is Intel, and those things cost more than the entire appliance in most cases.

In short, SSD tech is junk, but I'm stuck using it to meet price points. Fortunately, they do live at least a year in most cases. Jim and I spoke this morning, and due to the way these devices appear to be failing. We're no longer offering a "fan-less" device. The SSDs appear to be cooking... slowly. Anyone with one of my fan-less units is advised to pull the access panel off, attach the fan to the pin header, reboot the unit and turn on the thermal fan controls so it stays relatively silent. SSDs deployed in our other units with active cooling have shown ZERO returns... I don't think that's an accident.

I'm still trying to figure out how to make an official advisory out of this. But right now my health is dead... again. So I'm just drifting from thing to thing and doing what I can.

Don't mean to be a ball-buster, maybe I WAS right about the SSD in our NG-50F cooking

It has been behaving just fine since we replaced the SSD and plugged in the cooling fan back in late Nov. I still haven't had a chance to test the SSD supplied with the NG-50F, but based on what you said above, I'm guessing it is no good. Want it back?

- Joe

[sky-knight]

If we've replaced it I'd appreciate it sent back so we can test it. If we didn't replace it then I need that drive so I can RMA it for you.

But yeah, yours was just one of the first. Most units are fine... that's the odd part. It's a small percentage that has failed, but it's significant enough for me to make some design changes. I don't like selling lemons.

And I wasn't doubting what you were saying, but at the time we only had 2 failures. Now we're something like 10... Which mind you is still within the statistical normal for drive failures. It's just that I can't ignore the fan enabled devices seem to not have the issue.

That's what I get for trusting manufacturer specs...