Sonicwall Pro 4060

[highsidemary]

I work at a fairly large financial institution that has recently installed the 4060. We have issues with having to reboot weekly (or even more frequently) due to a serious dropoff in download speeds. This only effects certain FTP downloads. Our tech guy has received no ideas from the vendor, and we continue to have "dial-up speed" downloads until we reboot. Any ideas?

 

[oea]

When the 4060 was intalled a mysonicwall account should have been created, it is important that the latest firmware is installed on the appliance. To check log in to the admin page on the sonicwall and make a note of the firware version, then go to

http://www.mysonicwall.com

log in to the account for your firewall and check the latest downloads.

Are you using Standard OS or Enhanced?

Assuming you have the latest firmware, have you checked the logs to see what services and connections are present when the download speed becomes congested? if you have Viewpoint check the bandwidth usage / services, it is possible that you have a problem inside your LAN that is connecting to the internet and using bandwidth.

If you do find something in the log, try to set-up a rule on the Pro4060 to prevent traffic from the LAN to access the specific service / external IP, then see if your bandwidth is available, ideally trackdown the device on the LAN and remove the rouge software / service.

It is very unusual to have to reboot a Sonicwall Appliance, the latest firmware is very stable. If you have a valid Sonicwall support contract I would suggest raising a sonicwall support request via

http://www.mysonicwall.com

 

[oea]

Correction, Enhanced OS is standard on Pro4060

Kind regards

Sonicwall CSSA

 

[technome]

Is the Sonic on a UPS unit. The Sonics I have used have cheesy power supplies, mainly small capacitors, power fluctuations affect them.
Another possibility is corruption. Document all settings, reset the unit, and start from scratch.
Is the MTU set correctly? Pathping to a site with no limiting routers, yahoo.com is good, if the MTU is good, you should not have packet losses, or very few.

........................................
Chernobyl disaster..a must see pictorial

http://www.kiddofspeed.com/default.htm

 

[twwabw]

"It is very unusual to have to reboot a Sonicwall Appliance, the latest firmware is very stable. "

I'd have to agree with that . Here's one at a site:

SonicWALL has been up: 280 Days, 20 Hours, 21 Minutes, 29 Seconds

 

[highsidemary]

As an end user, I do not have access to change or document settings on the firewall. I do know that the MTU settings had to be changed from 1500 to 1396 due to extremely slow connection speeds when the firewall was first installed. This cleared up most of the problems, except for the specific downloads that occasionally drop down to dial-up speeds. The firewall is connected to UPS.
I am trying to find a solution, since our tech support refuses to delve into the problem any further than just rebooting the firewall when we the problem recurs. I don't feel this is acceptable, so am trying to find a solution on my own.
Thanks for your help,
Melissa

 

[oea]

I would agree with you that simply rebooting the Pro4060 is hiding the cause of the download problem.

Without having more detail about your installation and access to your systems it is very difficult to help you. When this system was install, I assume a Sonicwall CSSA configured it to your particular needs.

When you get the problem, if you stop downloading, leave the Sonicwall up, the TCP/IP connection to the download server should clear / timeout. Can you still surf the internet / send email, etc. Or does everything grind to a halt?

Are you Downloading from the internet / wan in to your system or are you uploading from your system to a server on the wan / internet?

If you are only getting this problem when a particular download occurs, I would suggest testing the download, does this download eminate from a standalone PC, multiple PCs or a server?, test one by one until the problem occurs, then isolate the problem PC / server. Where are you downloading from? could it be that there is a problem at the other end? Do you have a second internet path to the download server to test?. What protocals / ports are being used?

Has a specific rule been set-up for the download?

If you feel the problem is with the Pro4060 then I would suggest Sonicwall support, via mysonicwall.com. They will need a detailled diagram of your network, diagnostic report from the Pro4060 and fault conditions / protocal / ports sent to them, they will try to emulated in the lab what you have, just in case it could be a Sonicwall problem.

One thing to try, you should have a free trail of Sonicwall Comprehensive Security Suite for 30days, you just need to activate it. This includes Intrusion Detection / Spyware / Gateway AV. If you switch it all on, any problem with the download content / payload should be detected.

Do you have Sonicwall Viewpoint reporting system? it would help you greatly in tracking this problem down.



Sonicwall CSSA