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XG105W Review

SophosStorm

So I thought it was time to do a small review on the XG105W, in a nut shell I don't think this product is good value. In fact, I think it's a low grade product. I started trying out the XG210 for work, seemed ok so I picked up XG85W for home so I could roll out updates first at home then at work. The 85 lasted about a month, complete junk, rebooting continually, unresponsive, even had it swapped out during that month but exact same issues. Out came my pocket book to spend more money to upgrade to the XG105W, although slightly faster its still a terrible product in my opinion. It's very sluggish, wifi is continually is in and out, in fact its so bad I'm having to reboot almost every few days.

After approx. 2 years using these XG's I can say I would honestly not recommend them, they are not enterprise products by any means. For myself once the 3 year subscription is done I will replace with an actual enterprise product, for work, I cant say just yet but I can see us moving to aother product, it was a poor decision on my part.

Very disappointed with this product.



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  • 0

    All I can recommend is you lean on your reseller to provide you with demo kit before purchase so you can get the sizing right.
    Then lean on them again to get the best multi year subscription. You will save a bunch of money this way and ensure you get the sizing right.

    If they won't help you, talk to Sophos directly. The squeaky wheel does get the grease.

     

    For home use I suggest you get the freely available software version and run on an old PC rather than spending money on the low end hardware.

    It works well on an old pc I have with 4gb memory and there are no licensing costs. It is the same product. If you really want an appliance chassis for home, you can probably pickup an old SG/XG or whitebox and install it on it, but again, you really want to be avoiding the old SG105, 115, 120 products people are getting rid of.

    www.sophos.com/.../sophos-xg-firewall-home-edition.aspx

     

    For branch offices in the enterprise (about a dozen staff) we use XG125 which works well. We have some an old SG115 and SG120 upgraded to XG and the difference between them and XG125 was very noticeable but it all comes down to how many features you are using. For us, our branch offices are not hosting servers or email and we use different wifi equipment so none of those components are configure on the XG.

    It's a good theory having the same software stack across the entire hardware range until someone decides to turn everything on like it says on the box. Agreed that sub XG125 is probably best to avoid if you are planning on using most of the features.

    We do have an XG85W baby XG out in our touring kit for 6 staff on the road (4G modem backing) and that seems to work fine for secure internet access with an IPSEC tunnel back to the head office.

    Don't think I realised there were XG86 and 106 out but great, any hardware generational change that improves performance is great.

     

    XG 210 and XG 330 in our more serious offices with 200+ people without too much of a problem.

    Like any product at a sizable site, you're going to want to do a far bit of tuning to get the performance you want.

  • 0 in reply to balletbob

    This is not a sizing issue, this is XG105W is ONE person. This is a product issue, plain and simple.

  • 0 in reply to SophosStorm

    Hello 

    15 foot radius ????  The strength of my XG105 signal is far more powerful than that.

    We actually have two XG105 so I presume there's something horribly wrong with your device.

    As far as I am concern, I'm loosing connection with those XG105 unit.  But not loosing the wireless signal.  Meaning these devices are seriously underpowered. Atheros WPEA-128N AR5BHB112 wireless adapters (abgn, 3x3:3) in there are actually very good.

    Problems are:

    Anemic SSD.  Transcend SSD370, 64 gig not any faster than a very old HDD.  Again, a 128 gig is twice as fast, and a 256 is a hefty four times faster.  Read here at the bottom of the page https://www.transcend-info.com/Products/No-631

    2 Gig memory only

    Atom CPU 2 cores, 1460 MHz, no hyperthreading.

    It is indeed extremely expensive for what it is.  Clearly, the free version with an old PC is a much faster alternative.

    Paul Jr

  • 0 in reply to SophosStorm

    I have an xg105w rev 3 that ran a 25 person office with multiple vpn tunnels always on. Your equipment rev2? Or rev1???

    I also had a xg 105 rev2 that ran the same office for a few years before this one.

  • 0 in reply to apalm123

    OK.  I finally found one XG115 rev 3 on EBay.

    This is the minimal Sophos should sell.  It has a 4 gig sodimm (instead of 2 for the 105) inside but seems to hit the 32 bit barrier and shows just a little over 3.2 gig.  So in real live it is only an additional 1 gig compare to the XG105.

    Cpu is a bit faster ...  200 ghz more, but more importantly, it has 4 cores instead of 2.  You feel the difference while accessing graphics on the appliance's WEB ui.

    Storage is still 64 Gig SATA SSD.  M2 form factor instead of 2.5".  Crap !!! If at least they had selected an NVMe storage. What's the fucking point ?  for $1 more you would have a NVMe 128 gig. That's ridiculous.

    So ready to test v18 tomorrow.

    Paul Jr

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  • 0 in reply to apalm123

    OK.  I finally found one XG115 rev 3 on EBay.

    This is the minimal Sophos should sell.  It has a 4 gig sodimm (instead of 2 for the 105) inside but seems to hit the 32 bit barrier and shows just a little over 3.2 gig.  So in real live it is only an additional 1 gig compare to the XG105.

    Cpu is a bit faster ...  200 ghz more, but more importantly, it has 4 cores instead of 2.  You feel the difference while accessing graphics on the appliance's WEB ui.

    Storage is still 64 Gig SATA SSD.  M2 form factor instead of 2.5".  Crap !!! If at least they had selected an NVMe storage. What's the fucking point ?  for $1 more you would have a NVMe 128 gig. That's ridiculous.

    So ready to test v18 tomorrow.

    Paul Jr

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