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Can anyone who has used or evaluated either of these applicances please give me your opinion on them? What are the strengths or weaknesses of either of these products? Would you deploy them?
Sonicwall as a firewall appliance and Blucoat as a web content filtering system (proxy).
Bluecoats are quite good. Never had any problems with them. Easy to administer and update. They can handle a decent load without any problems.
I actually have a pair of Sonicwall's set up and they work pretty much without a hitch. They are the smaller units, SOHO3's. Easy to configure, easy to monitor. Pretty much I put them in place, and have updated the fireware a couple of times, otherwise they have been in operation 24/7 for years.
Mr. Phishy, as you know, Cisco's CLI is a nightmare compared to the interface used to manage Sonicwall appliances. We have several here on a test lan and they are very easy to deal with. While they don't handle the complex rulesets in use with meh PIX boxen, they certainly work very well and have proven reliable.
--TH13
Thanks for the feedback. I've done a bit of searching around and there are a lot of others in the security community who echo similar responses. I had a discussion regarding a couple of security products the other day and these two products were brought up. I had never used them and most of what I could initially find out there was just marketing material. You know how that stuff reads...
From what I have heard sonicwalls are great. So there 1 more person who says so!
I have a whole bunch of bluecoats and they work great. The only problem i find is if you are and ISP and deploy these devices across several clients it becomes a management nightmare. They work fine but you really need to know customers needs and then tweak the rules every few days to get the best results. Hope this helps you.
sonic walls are great!
Just make sure you keep up with the firmware updates, and they will preform great for you.
We have them in all our remote offices and use them for firewall / vpn.
Can't comment on the other one though, sorry :)
One of my clients has a Sonic Wall that I manage. It has been in place for about 2 years with no issues and administration is fairly easy.