Sonicwall PRO 1260 - not enough?

[Sasiki]

I have Fiber internet coming into my main office. The ISP says it's 3mbit up and down. They supply us with a switch that the fiber comes in to. There are 5 active ports on it. I have a Sonicwall 1260 in one of the ports and a basic linksys wireless router in another to provide wireless to guests at the office. A speedtest from the wireless router shows usually around 10mbit up and down. A speedtest through the Sonicwall shows 2.5mbit up and down. Just for kicks, I disabled IPS, gateway antivirus and anti-spyware tonight. A speedtest on speedtest.net showed 17mbit up AND down! I looked on Sonicwall's website and the Thoroughput of the Pro 1260 is only 5mbit/sec with all of the router services enabled. The upper models allow for 25mbit to 300mbit thoroughput.

Doesn't it make sense for me to upgrade my router to a higher model Sonicwall to take advantage of the bandwidth? If I am downloading a file, my remote offices are calling saying they're ping time to our Telnet application is slow. When I ping their gateways through the VPN, it's about 400ms instead of the usual 80ms. While doing the speedtests tonight, I pinged a remote gateway. With everything enabled, speeds were 3mbit and ping of 400ms. With all services disabled, speeds were 17mbit and ping of 80ms.

What I'm wondering is if I buy an upgraded model router and enable everything, will my bandwidth still be 17mbit and ping of 80ms.

Might have to read this post a couple times for it to sink in. My thoughts are always all over the place.

 

[MorfiusX]

I think you've already answered your own question. I would suggest upgrading. One thing to look for is to see if the SonicWalls support any type of QoS. (I'm not to familiar with them). With QoS, you could give priority to the telnet app.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I think you've already answered your own question. .

Yup..seems the question has been answered. You measured an average bandwidth without the SW, you found SWs documentation on the throughput of this router, and the numbers are far apart. "A chain is only as strong as its weakest link"

Plus..how many users? You tested by yourself..was this under normal full load? If not...numbers go down even more with the SW.

Odd connection..quoted 3 meg fiber but appears their package allows you to burst into the high teens. Or can you get steady pulls at that speed? Like..download a 50 meg file? Or...does it only burst at the first 10 megs of a download..like Comcasts Powerboost? And then settle down to the quoted speed after that.

 

[Sasiki]

Yup..seems the question has been answered. You measured an average bandwidth without the SW, you found SWs documentation on the throughput of this router, and the numbers are far apart. "A chain is only as strong as its weakest link"

Plus..how many users? You tested by yourself..was this under normal full load? If not...numbers go down even more with the SW.

Odd connection..quoted 3 meg fiber but appears their package allows you to burst into the high teens. Or can you get steady pulls at that speed? Like..download a 50 meg file? Or...does it only burst at the first 10 megs of a download..like Comcasts Powerboost? And then settle down to the quoted speed after that.

On wireless, I can download a linux iso at a steady 900kb/s. I even mentioned it to the network admin at the ISP and he says "i'm showing you at 3 meg." so I said Ok. The speed test was done last night with no one at the office. The internal network has about 40 users. Our entire company is 100 users. They all connect to the application and e-mail server here. I just did a speedtest and pulled 2mbit up and down with all security services enabled. With them disabled, I did 19meg down and 2 up. I also just started an Ubuntu iso download. It went through the first 150mb at 1.5MB/sec. I cancelled it after this. What's weird though is last night, my upload was like 12mbit and today is down to the advertised 3, but download is still way up there. This one was bought by the last network admin and suggested to him by a company that he had used a couple times. I always like to do my research and buy a bit more than I need. I'd rather spend a tad more now and be ready for future projects.

What I don't want to happen though is me buy a new $3,000 Sonicwall with greater throughput, enable all security services and have my ping times still skyrocket. I don't think that's going to be the case though. I just looked at the last 30 minute average of CPU usage in the Sonicwall. It gives the average for each minute. The last 4 minutes were 100% usage, 10 minutes ago was 80%. I'm hoping to implement an Exchange server this year as well. I need to go ahead and bite the bullet and upgrade the firewall.

Edit: And now with just regular network traffic, usage is at 100% and ping times are back up to 400ms. Someone must be downloading an e-mail. I think it's time to fill out a Purchase Order and submit it!