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Sonicwall SOHO Internet Security Appliance
Page 5
Author: Tim Higgins Review Date: 9/29/2000
Keeping
it private
Those of you who need to use either PPTP or IPsec based
VPN tunnels to connect to another network won't be disappointed by the
SOHO. Contrary to what you may believe from reading the SOHO's product
descriptions, you don't have to buy a $500 VPN upgrade to get VPN capability.
The SOHO handles VPN passthru for both unlimited PPTP and IPsec
clients and will support a PPTP server as long as you establish the proper
Public Server via the Access features (see this
page for info on doing this). Note that your clients will
need to be running the appropriate VPN client software for this "free"
VPN capability
So why would you want to spend $500? The simple answer
is that you need the VPN upgrade if:
you want to establish IPsec based VPN connections from
the WAN to machines on the LAN, i.e. allow remote users to securely
access LAN clients via your IPsec server
you want to establish a "box-to-box" VPN
with another SonicWall product, to connect two offices, for example
you don't want to run VPN client software on your clients,
but want the SOHO to terminate the VPN "tunnel" from a remote
VPN server instead.
If you want to do any of the above, you might be better
off with the SOHO
Telecommuter. The Telecommuter has the SOHO's capabilities,
plus the VPN "upgrade" built-in. The trade-off is that
is supports 5 vs. the SOHO's 10 users, but at an on-line price of $500,
it's a much better deal than a $370 SOHO plus a $500 upgrade! By
the way the SonicWall VPN is compatible with IPsec VPNs like the Check
Point Firewall-1, Cisco PIX, Nortel Contivity and Axent Raptor.
Remote users accessing your VPN enabled LAN will need VPN
client software, which can be downloaded from the SonicWall site.
Advanced
(?!) features
After wading through all the features, many of which are
considered "Advanced" on other routers, I thought "What
could they possibly have on this 'Advanced' menu?" Answer:
Features that really are advanced, and probably beyond the scope
of most small LAN users. But read on and decide for yourself!
Proxy Relay
The first Advanced tab allows you to automatically send all HTTP requests
to a Proxy server instead of directly to the Web, without having
to change any LAN client browser settings! Not really a small
LAN feature, this allows web page requests to be filled by a local proxy
server instead of going out over the web to fetch the page. Done
properly, this can conserve bandwidth (done badly, it really ticks off
users). The catch is that the proxy server must be located on the
WAN side of the router. If your ISP has one of these servers, you
can experiment with enabling and disabling it to see if it really speeds
web browsing, and not have to mess with changing anyone's browser settings.
Intranet
This feature allows you to use the SOHO to protect only some machines
connected to it. You can enter up to 64 IP address ranges and have
those ranges be attached either the the SOHO's LAN or WAN port, or use
the normal configuration of having the WAN link attached to the SOHO router.
I have to confess that I found this feature hard to follow
and even this
FAQ didn't help much, except to explain that most people probably
wouldn't use this feature, and that you can't use this feature and NAT
routing together.
Static Routing
Moving right along, we come to the third tab that allows you set static
routes in cases where you use the SOHO on a LAN with other routers and
want machines behind each router to find each other. Note that the
SOHO does not support any dynamic routing protocols such as RIP, since
SonicWall feels that they are insecure (see
this FAQ).
One-to-One NAT
Hidden deep in the bowels of the SOHO's menus is this neat little feature,
usually found only on enterprise grade routers. To use it, though,
you'll need to have more than one IP address from your ISP.
If you do, then One-to-One NAT allows you to set up multiple Public Servers
that can be assigned to different IP addresses. See this
example of three LAN based webservers assigned to three WAN IP
addresses.
If your brain hurts, just hold on 'cuz we're coming into the home
stretch!
72.2% | 
27.8% | out of 36 reviews 
