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(More customer reviews)Warning: Never, ever, ever buy this item or recommend it to a client. If you do buy it, don't buy it from Amazon, it will be harder to return it.
I am an IT consultant and I want to start off by saying that I really like the Sonicwall products that I have worked with before (wired firewall/routers). This is the reason, in fact, that I recommended this product to a client when they said that they wanted a secure Wi-Fi solution for the Tablet PC's they were buying for their office.
From the first day working with the product I regretted my recommendation.
Setup was easy, even not using the built-in wizards. But after setting things up for a bit I realized that the router was bound and determined to put the wired and wireless computers onto different subnets and that there was no way to change this behavior. That would not have been a problem, except that there is no way to allow those two subnets to communicate with each other (not on a workgroup anyway) unless you use Sonicwall's VPN software to create a VPN from the wireless client to the router and then to the wired network. In fact, the built-in firewall blocks communications between the subnets by default, but even after disabling this (and checking the box that said to "allow Windows networking") the two subnets still couldn't see each other.
I looked on Sonicwall's forum's (which you only have access to after purchasing and registering a product) and found that this is a common problem with no real answers except to use Sonicwalls VPN client (there were other answers given, but none of them worked). The best I could figure the problem was with name resolution, the firewall could be set to "allow" NetBios packets through from one subnet to another, but there was no evidence that the router was actually forwarding those packets. I assume that the subnets could communicate using another name-resolution system, but DNS wasn't available on my client's workgroup :). My clients pretty much needed the Wi-Fi network for Internet access, and didn't use it much anyway, so this didn't bother them and we just left things as they were.
My clients only used the Tablet PC's occasionally for the first couple of months and had connection problems off and on, it was usually a matter of resetting the router, and everything was fixed. Then, in about the third month of owning the router, they began using the Tablet PC's more often and had constant connection problems. I went in to diagnose the problem, thinking that the problem might be the tablets as they were identifying the router as an unsecure connection (it was WPA/TKIP). I made sure that Windows and all drivers were updated. I tried to connect to the router when standing right next to it, but was unable. I discovered that my PDA also identified the connection as unsecured. I made sure that the router had the latest updates and then I checked its logs and discovered that it had been reporting several errors:
1. It would say that it couldn't create an association with the client trying to connect, but then, immediately afterward, would say that the client had been authenticated. (The client wasn't connected)
2. It would say that the clients were using a kind of encryption that it didn't understand (or somesuch).
3. It said, at least once, that too many clients were connected to the router (even though there were only five computers in the office and the thing is licensed for ten), so it couldn't accept any more connections. It said this when reporting elsewhere that there were only three computers connected (one of which was not actually connected at the time).
I unplugged the router and plugged it back in and the tablets connected immediatley. I went to the Sonicwall forums and found that problems like this were quite common (as were stories of consultants with clients angry about this). It seems that the thing "freaks out" on a fairly regular basis and then just drops connections and doesn't let them re-connect.
I had already spent several hours confirming that it was the router that was at fault and so, at this time, I recommended to my client that they get rid of this and buy a D-Link for $50. They did, it worked without a hitch.
I've already done several hours of free work for them trying to get my recommendation to work and now I'm trying to return the router for my client, so they aren't out $450 (or I'm not out $450, since I recommended the thing). I called Sonicwall and was forwarded to sales and then to the "account manager for my territory" who basically told me that there isn't a darn thing that Sonicwall will do for me and kept trying to get me to talk to tech support (even after I told him that my client had purchased a new router that was working just fine), but I already spent so many hours pinning the problem on the router and wasting my client's time, and my clients were already so frustrated with the thing (and, by proxy, me) that I don't want to spend a couple of more hours trying to fix this very badly put-together product (it was noted a few times in the forums that this appears to be just a normal Sonicwall firewall/router with Wi-Fi slapped on as an afterthought) and frustrating my clients any further (and shutting down their network again). He said that there was nothing that Sonicwall could do about it and that I have to return the product to Amazon who, I think he said, will then try to pass it back to their Sonicwall reseller and they will, I think, consult Sonicwall support, so my client may or may not get any money back. I wasn't sure on those last two bits.
One way or another, this guy was wayyyy more concerned about getting me to keep the router than satisfying a consultant who has been responsible for the sale of several of his company's products. A mistake that I won't make again.
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SonicWALL TZ 170 Wireless 10-Node Firewall (01-SSC-5710)
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