What is the new "Essential Firewall" Edition of ASG? - Page 2

Paketschubser · #11 (**permalink**) 01-10-2010, 01:33 PM

Hi William,

first of all: learn how to quote

Quote:

Originally Posted by William

A/v protection. This is included even in an ipcop scenario with a simple addon. give it only the clamav and keep the other for yourself(this is also what Untangle does).

This is too much simplified. Of course you'll find free products which offer a proxy with an included AV engine, but you should not compare a complete UTM solution with isolated applications. The main advantage of an Astaro is that you get all features in one applicance, so you've to take care of only one box and not to spend several hours each month on troubleshooting and updating multiple installations.
Btw. I did not find ANY comparable free solution to the Astaro web security. Other solutions are neither simple to configure, nor do they offer a wide range of user authentication interfaces or reporting features. In most cases you even spend a lot of time in configuring a lot of individual services to get them working.
Simple example: Do you know any good working free software, which offers a SSL Proxy with included AV?

Quote:

Originally Posted by William

Also include A/V for e-mail.

You'll find plenty solutions with an included SpamAssassin + ClamAV which do quite a good job in filtering infected emails, but your users won't get access to a web based portal showing them which email was blocked, possibilities for releasing blocked mails from the quarantaine and caring their own whitelist. Every research for a user searching his mail will take a lot of time in system administration and of course you have to do manual system updates periodically. If you compare the costs you should also add the additional working time you'll have to spend on free solutions. I bet (if your admin is not located in india or china ;-) the comercial solution offers more features and will be cheaper.

Quote:

Originally Posted by William

Most of my clients(and i deal with 10 employees or less) are running windows servers.

If you calculate all the costs for hardware, administration, licensing and support an Astaro UTM costs about 10 Euro per user and month (for small companies, larger installations are much cheaper). Do you really think you can setup and maintain a free solution with comparable features for a lower price?

Quote:

Originally Posted by William

Limiting openvpn to the "paid" editions is silly when it's free and rather easily implemented...and it's included in Untangle.

No, you simply left out your administration overhead in the calculation. How much time do you have to spend for an OpenVPN installation including time for debugging, maintaining the users, installing security patches and offering simplified installation packages for your customer notebooks?

William · #12 (**permalink**) 01-10-2010, 05:00 PM

openvpn is simplicity. the client is simplicity and the setup is as well. The cost is zero. How much time configuring openvpn? 10 minutes at the most initially...after that it's much easier to push out and maintain than anything else..with the exception of web-based which i personally don't trust. IO can actually configure UT's openvpn faster than in Astaro. THe UT will then at your direction send out the client files with certificates already built in. NO usernames or passwords required if you don't want them.

Untangle is free and comes close(yes it's not the same)..but an ssl proxy is overrated imo.

UT may not give(int he base free product) the ability to manage spam quarentine but the addon is reasonably priced. If i wnated to i could build a utm off of centos and updates? easy..clam auto updates itself. SA can be croned...yum can do the rest. automation isn't an issue and this is NOT a large value to the Astaro distribution.

I don't know where you get your figured but Astaro is most assuredly more than 10/month..just for the software alone.

I have used and deployed both...Astaro and Untangle..as well as a highly customized IPcop build(which is still in service). Astaor has it's place but frankly the essential edition doesn't hold up to Untangle in the areas i mentioned.

William · #13 (**permalink**) 01-10-2010, 09:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paketschubser

Hi William,

first of all: learn how to quote

read the chart:
http://www.astaro.com/newsletter/Ast...Comparison.pdf

no web security at all in the essential version. No mail security, no AD, no OPenvpn, no a/v of any kind, basically it's their version of...ready? Untangle. However untangle for free has good reporting, openvpn, a/v for mail AND web, content filtering, anti-spam, ips,......

Astaro essentials honestly can't hold a candle to something like Untangle. I understand they want to protect their income and i don't begrudge that..but their built in limitations need some..."tweaking". While I'm not enthused about how much open source code they have removed the product works..

Instead of belittling me about using the forums maybe you should have read the chart above AND the feature list of Untangle at least?

FreudianSlip · #14 (**permalink**) 01-12-2010, 11:55 AM

I have to second William here.

I dont think anyone's complianing about the feature list in the full ASG. As we all know it's very comprehensive, but when you offer something like this essential version for use in businesses, the business has to have some reason for using it over and above the more functional competition.

My thoughts would be for a small company i.e. < 10 users (the size of organisation that perhaps wouldnt splash out several thousands of pounds on a fully fledged UTM device) something that would class as being essential to their online lives. In my circumstances, the company I work for now (4 employees) would need a 3 zone firewall (external/internal/dmz), IPS, A/V, Mail Filter and SSL VPN.

Now maybe that list alone breaks what Astaro want to supply free of charge, and that's fine - I'm not going to whinge at them to give it to me for nothing, but I would like to tell them why I'm *not* able to use this essential edition.

Freudy

BAlfson · #15 (**permalink**) 01-12-2010, 03:18 PM

I wouldn't disagree with you, Freudy, but I think there's a world of difference between the freebies out there and the relatively-inexpensive ASG110. Also, the amount of time needed to install and maintain "free" tools makes those tools, in effect, more expensive than an ASG110. Of course, if you look upon that activity as a hobby and the time doesn't cost the business anything, that's a different story.

Cheers - Bob

William · #16 (**permalink**) 01-12-2010, 04:45 PM

Unfortunatly i ahve actual feild experience with UT AND astaro. Astaro takes MORE time to configure than UT..period...addons included. Once they are configured both are as close to maintenance free as you can get. There's no hobby here..i run my own business. My relaly small clients that would take advantage of essentials get more value from Untangle due to it's increased feature set. Larger clients that require the higher level of support Astaro gives find the value in the feature set of Astaro.

HOwever we aren't going full astaro in this thread..and i stand behind my statement that the free Untangle is more than a match for the free Astaro Essentials.

James Bourne · #17 (**permalink**) 02-14-2010, 01:11 AM

I took a look at this edition of Astaro today (yes ... I know I know).

It's borderline useless. You can't patch it. When you upload patches to it you can't apply them. Nearly every service is disabled. SSL VPN is even disabled.

C'mon Astaro you are competing against PFsense and Smoothwall in this "free" firewall category. This edition makes a mockery of your product line up.

BAlfson · #18 (**permalink**) 02-14-2010, 06:54 PM

As a reseller of Astaro, my "test" is whether this helps me beat the Watchguards and others of the world. I'm interested in PFsense and Smoothwall, but don't really care to compete in the "one sale at a time to tiny businesses" marketplace. I don't think that pays enough to justify the amount of knowledge one needs to do a good job. If a tiny business wants me to help them, I'll do it at my price (a fair one) and with the equipment I master, but if they want me to compete for their business, I'm outta there like RoadRunner.

If ever I install an Essential Firewall in a business, it will be because it lets me manage that with ACC along with the other Astaros in their organization, or because it's a starter for a small company that can grow into a full-fledged UTM. I don't like to invest my time ("life") in situations that have little future.

So, with all due respect to those of you who know how to set up the other devices, I think the Essential Firewall's competitiveness with free/low-end devices does not have major relevance to whether the current mix of capabilites will be the most-successful Astaro path.

That said, there are some capabilities I would have hoped for - including limited web anti-virus. Another was site-to-site, but, according to thevarguy, Astaro has something coming that will knock our socks off. If this is true, then it would not have made sense to include that capability for free in the Essential offerring.

Anyway, William, I believe you that PFsense is superior to the Essential Firewall. From a marketing point of view, I think your customers will be better off if they can grow into an Astaro. If they can't justify $30/mo. for Web Security in thier small business, they certainly can't afford to pay you a reasonable amount per hour to take care of them. I acknowledge that that's a marketer's reasoning, and is divorced from an intelligent comaprison of the technical issues.

Cheers - Bob

William · #19 (**permalink**) 02-14-2010, 07:09 PM

we'll see..

The wireless controller aspect..not that's nice..

Essentials however needs to really add a couple of things to it's featureset..yes it's manageable by ACC but it's basically ipcop with management. Some businesses might find value in such a reduced featureset..but none of my clients now or in the future will.

TheDrew · #20 (**permalink**) 02-22-2010, 01:17 PM

For the firm I work for, I was really looking forward to seeing the Astaro Essentials Edition come out. The one thing that killed it for me though is the missing Site to Site VPN capability.

Our firm, and our sister companies, depend heavily on Site-to-Site VPN to keep our branch offices connected to our three main offices. Right now we're using a mix of Cisco & 3rd party hardware to do so and my hope had been that with the reduced price of ASG hardware because of the essentials edition release I could argue the value of the ASG over Cisco's 800 & 1800 series routers.

As it stands, Cisco delivers that critical feature for us and does so at a better price then an ASG appliance.