Dell Sonicwall TZ 215 7-port Network Security Appliance (Hardware Only) - 01-SSC-4977

This is a great professional firewall with access point capabilities. It's fully customizable, just like the "big boy" firewalls. Make no mistake about it, however: this is not an entry-level firewall like a LinkSys or DLink, and requires experience to know how to configure it properly. This is NOT a beginners' or intermediates' firewall, professionals only should purchase one of these.This firewall allows setting up 6 separate and distinct DMZs, not including the wireless LAN. I'm using 4 of the 6 legs, and got it up & running in a few hours. L2TP took a bit longer to get going, but also works quite well. However, be aware that VoIP traffic doesn't seem to work across the L2TP VPN. The web-based GUI is very easy to navigate and intuitive.As another reviewer here noted, there are a LOT of additional features of this firewall, but you have to pay for each license separately. There is gateway antivirus / antispyware / intrusion prevention, botnet filtering, antispam, WAN accelerators, and numerous others. All of these cost a lot of $$$ per year to enable. If you're a business with lots of users, this may be cost-justifiable but for a SOHO it is cost-prohibitive. I did my research before buying and knew this going in, so that's why I'm not rating this item lower because of that.Be aware that Dell Sonicwall does not give free firmware updates! It requires an annual subscription to receive continued firmware updates and support. It is between $100 and $200 a year, depending on how many years you pay up front and the level of support you want.Even with the high price and high cost of continued ownership, I'm really pleased with the TZ 215. It performs extremely well, is quite zippy, and is a seriously professional firewall. If you're looking for a real firewall to protect your environment rather than a low end consumer-grade firewall, this is the one for you.

I really wanted this product to work as it has the features and specs I was looking for but in the end it simply failed, three times. After updating the firmware and setting up the firewall and wireless AP all was good. It was after setting up SSL VPN that things went wrong. While the SSL VPN was in use the internet connection dropped. Trying to login locally to the admin page would not work either. The only way to fix it was to power cycle the unit. I noticed that it was rather hot to the touch. Reconnecting via SSL VPN would cause the unit to eventually freeze again and require a power cycle each time. This is where things get odd. Under the wireless settings it indicates the regulatory domain that the device is set for. This is not a user changeable field, it is set at the factory in the ROM. Before the error occurred it correctly displayed "FCC - North America", after the error it displayed "ETSI - Europe". Because of this it would cause issues with connecting wirelessly. And there is no way to set it back. So now SSL VPN and wireless networks were both unusable. The people at SonicWALL support were puzzled by this. I was instructed to return the unit as this would not be fixable, even for a field technician and technically this change is not even possible. I ended up buying and returning three different units, two from an Amazon seller and lastly one sold by Amazon, all for the same reason. I have had SonicWALL security appliances in the past and have been very satisfied with them, however I cannot recommend this product.

This product review is difficult for me, as I am fairly young in my IT career (this was the first firewall I had ever purchased) and I bought it primarily because that was the product in use before (old pre-dell model) and the gentleman I was changing jobs with felt that they had done a good job in the past and were easy to use. On this recommendation, I purchased a TZ 215w back in 2012 from Newegg and proceeded to configure.Back in 2012, the support department was existent (though definitely not 5 star). They were very helpful in getting familiarized with the basics of VPN setup and several other things I was not familiar with configuring within the sonicwall interface. Things got moving quickly and all went well for quite a while.What makes this review hard is that I like the product - It does what I need, has very little in the way of major issues (but please read below - it is the response to issues that is alarming), and, well, just runs.What I have fallen out of love with is Dell Support. I have had three cases I submitted now (over the course of the last year) where I had varying issues, always during firmware upgrades. Long story short, the average resolution time is 2.5 weeks for any of the issues I have had. The kick in the pants is, the last issue I entered was 21 days old and the ticket just auto-closed... the case was never even assigned to anyone and I never had any correspondence. This being my experience, here are my thoughts:The good:- A GUI interface that I find fairly easy to navigate- Hardware has been stable- Rackmount kit for this firewall (separate purchase) is great- A lot of potential features that could be usefulThe bad:- The interface is built on rules on top of rules on top of rules... Thank goodness for the wizard to do (what should be) commonplace things like port forwarding. In my opinion, you don't have a chance without running the wizard and then backtracking through to figure out what exactly happened.- Expensive (and this is the bottom line). Everything is an add-on. everything is expensive. Beware, if you have to even think about being at peace with the purchase price, its gonna be a long road. Firmware updates stop without a maintenance agreement. Things like Gateway Anti-virus are extra. They are a money pit.Bottom Line:I'm just not sure, looking back, I'd do this again. Purely from a reliability standpoint, I can't take anything away from the machine, but the ongoing costs of ownership and the progressively souring support experience are going to make it really hard to commit any more money to this cause. Buyer beware - a reliable product, but you will be paying to be on your own.