XG105W Review

Hi,you sound like a bit of a fiddler and neither of those devices would suit you, they are aimed at a small business with 5 to 10 employees doing web activities and mail with a stable connection.

Some details about your issue, was the memory filling up and causing the units to overload the small disk? Newerr XG86 and XG106 have more memory at least.

I am not trying to justify anything, just asking for more details about your issues.

Ian

I've had a few in businesses 5-20 people, but anything over 35 people and you need to start disabling some of the extra security services or get a bigger unit. Otherwise stuff will start to hang/crash. This should be advertised somewhere in the sizing chart I believe. This is no surprise though, this unit is not made for anything crazier or bigger than this. How is the 210 at work?

Hello

XG105 are too slow for home use as far as I am concerned.   The 2 Gig  sodimm memory module is constantly used at 80% or higher.  The atom cpu is paced very low with only two cores.  SSD in there is only 64 gig with a write rate of only 80 meg/S.  Yes, the speed of an old HDD.  With a 256 gig, that write speed would have increased by a ratio of four.  To 320 gig/s .  And 420 gig/s if it was 512 gig.

I too experience wireless that falls all of the time.

We are only two in my house.  Forget anything below a XG 135 for a small business

Paul jr.

Honestly I am not a fiddler, and the reason why in the case of my XG105W its just too unstable. I am one person in this household so really the 105's and under should have never been sold, they are just low grade components and commanding a premium price. I just want others to know, if they considering these units they might want to think again, and there is good reason they now have 86 and 106 models, I didnt even know this. Sophos should actually replace these models with ones that work and I will be contacting them. As far as wifi its pathetic, has about a 10-15ft radius and still drops, I'm about 15 feet away and it has dropped 8 times trying to type this message.

The XG210 is ok but it too is sluggish. We are not doing anything crazy with it, we have a basic setup with SSL VPN users, basic business services. My biggest beef was I initially went with the unit to integrate the sophos interceptX with EDR but after testing we quickly discovered our staff who go offsite no longer maintain a heatbeat so we are going with another product, which might make it easier to get rid of the Sophos box. There isnt anyone more disappointed this product hasnt worked out, I was so jazzed when i researched it and started using it but over all these months I have finally come to realization that's it not the product i once thought it was, and this replaced a Juniper Networks device because i got caught  up in the nice interface but there is no comparison between the 2.

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.

Hi,

you will need the XG86 or XG106 if you want to upgrade to the mythical V18.

Ian

Hi all,

we have about 130 XG running, from xg85 to XG210 and sfv 2C6GB.

XG85 was defintly a mistake, but xg86 is "fine" for a little branch office of a few users, small need of VPN and basic filtering.

XG106 is fine uppon 10/15 users with small needs too.

of course if you want the interface be fluent, xg210 is the minimum required, but the sizing is more 50+ users.

hope the mysthical V18 will improve the performance...

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

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