Customer Reviews:
 Weak features, horrible customer service, avoid Sonicwall October 16, 2008
Tyler Durden (Miami, Florida)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
In a short amount of time working with Sonicwalls, I discovered quite a few issues. I do not recommend Sonicwall as a result. Perhaps the CONS below won't affect you, but at least be aware of them.
PROS:
Small form factor for UTM
CONS:
Horrible customer service (outsourced to India, unless you are certified)
Long wait for customer service
Dynamic DNS client bug that has yet to be resolved (see below)
No DNS proxy intelligence for Split-Brain/Split horizon setup
Very weak DHCP server options, only basics
Poor documentation
Customer Service: First off, understand that level 1 is outsourced to India. I tried opening an incident via their web interface, and after several days without progress, I decided to call. The customer service number I dialed put me on hold right after selecting Tech Support. At some point (30 minutes later) an individual answered, and collected my details, and put me back on hold. About an hour later, the system forced me to leave a message and hung-up. I tried this several times, until I finally did get through to tech support. Now the first person that answers the phone and collects details (to help route the call), fails (or they lack the mechanism) to notify the final tech-support person, so you must repeat the details of your case (I mean seriously, is it terribly difficult to relay such details?). The VOICE quality(of the call) is terrible, I imagine they are using VOIP to backhaul calls to India, and using high compression, bandwidth saving techniques which result in low quality (I specialize in VOIP, and I know what they do to save money). This makes life rather difficult when already dealing with heavily accented/overly polite tech support in India.
The Dynamic DNS bug is quite simple. If you are getting the Enhanced O/S with the hopes of using dual ISP links (active/passive) and plan to use Dynamic DNS to maintain a simple hostname to dynamic ip mapping, you are out of luck. Dynamic DNS client on the Sonicwall is BOUND to the Primary WAN interface (how stupid is that?).
They don't support Split Brain (aka Split horizon) DNS, in fact their DNS capabilities are non-existent. The other major players in this field support this, why not Sonicwall?
DHCP - Where to begin? Its featureless, as weak as you can get it. It supports (options) DNS, WINS, Gateway, and a "callmanager" option. Thats it.
Poor documentation: I was trying to tunnel all my VPN traffic (both inbound to lan, and internet). Getting this done was difficult, because of non-existent documentation on the subject. You need to add some special NAT rules to support this, but NOWHERE is this indicated.
I tried communicating my disappointments to my Sonicwall sales rep, but it seems he can't "do anything about it". Sonicwall does not listen to customers (or at least in my size of business) - simply out of touch. I strongly recommend you consider another vendor (perhaps one of the top 2), as Sonicwall is out of touch with customers, and have a weak offering overall.
|
