Hardware Limitations In Home version

C'mon mate, lets imagine that sophos has to pay salaries, developing new solutions, ideas maintain current activities, infrastructure etc etc. We can be glad that sophos is allowing us a home users to using their product just for free with all features. Beside that, for home usage 4 cores and 6 gb is a overkill. With all features on you can gain 1GB/s. look how Fortigate(and other solutions) are expensive, what the are offering etc. With sophos you've got it for free with great community :) appreciate it ^^ and if you wanna use it for commercial just support it - buying it ;)

I understand this logic, but there is no reason to limit hardware if it is proven that the UTM is in a home location.  There are tons of other UTM packages out there that don't have hardware limitations.  I don't mind paying the annual license, but to pay the annual license with a hardware restriction is weak.  I guess I'll just stay on PFsense until they finally decide to remove the limitations.  Thanks

I’m not arguing it’s overkill, but I just don’t want the hardware limited.  There’s 16gb of memory.  The only thing I can think of is this is built on a 32bit version and they don’t have a 64bit version available.

Hi Michael,

I run a 6gb system and use all of that memory, to go above 4gb (3.8) you need a 64 bit system. My system uses 3.5gb of the available memory. Now in v17 you will find most home users with 6gb were running about 75% memory utilisation which has been fine tuned in v18.

Ian

Hi Ian,

I have read, but you have to use various disk tools (gparted and such) etc. Which I'm more than happy to do etc.  I was mulling an XG105- XG135 appliance at one point (used) but being on a UK ADSL connection, utterly pointless.

I was running an i3 6100T/32GB RAM with a 4 port Intel NIC with pfsense and no probs at all, it's now running ESXi 6.7 atm.  It lacks cores for me to turn it into the Sophos XG box.

Find the UI on my Atom system a bit slugish, hence why I may consider an update.

IF / WHEN 1Gbit internet arrives in our area I'd happily review specs again.  

Cheers,

Mike

75% is horrible.  If you had more available memory it wouldn't be pushing the limit like that.  I just don't get it.  Do they not have a 64-bit system available?  

Hi Michael,

let me try an put things into perspective

1/. XG is a 64bit OS.

2/. many XG  installations only have 2gb of ram using v17, v18 needs 4gb.

3/. 75% ram usage on a linux system is not an issue like on a MS system. Linux has a very much better memory management system and uses swap effectively.

4/. a while ago many forum member were very upset that their XG's memory usage was running around the 70-80% mark. Sophos XG devs took notice added a lot of new functionality and refined the XG, they also tuned the load management as reported in the GUI and diagnostics. 

My system is currently showing around 60% memory usage which grows if I leave the GUI open for too long, but shrinks when the GUI is closed. Prior to v18 my XG memory usage was around 75% on a 6gb system.

If you are a home user and like to fiddle with your firewall settings, then a J1900 or XG85/6 or XG 105/6 is not for you. If you are a set and leave then they will be fine depending on your internet connection speed of course. I have J1900 4 port NIC system which I use for testing, but it is too slow when making changes or reviewing logs for my regular use.

Ian 

I had a feeling, which is why I feel like they should just unlock it rather than have the hardware limitations on the package.  Until they remove the hardware limitations I can't see the reason to switch to Sophos.  I think this is a sad thing they have chosen to do, and could have easily unlocked for the $50/year subscription; as well as allowing unlimited devices.  It's not hard to prove the device is at a house location.  I hope the developers actually read this post, and see the benefit for unlocking the hardware limitations.

There's quite a lot of people arguing on their behalf that the hardware limitations in the software are more than enough hardware.  I feel these people just don't understand that you should be allowed to use faster processors and more ram if you deem it necessary.  I understand the company wants you to buy their devices, but then why have a software package available at all to home users.  They obviously realized a need, but determined that a limitation should be on that need.  

Any who this seems pointless at this time; as the developers will not unlock the software package for users.  Therefore, I will continue to use PFSense rather than giving the Sophos developers a yearly subscription fee.  Good luck to others; maybe they will finally realize this is the right thing in V20.

There is a thing of cutting off your nose to spite your face - by all means stick with PFSense if you so wish - just to ask....you are aware of the security vulnerabilities that exist in the product?

If not, pass me your IP address and I'll give you a demonstration...

Hi Michael,

you can use the fastest intel processor money can buy, nothing stops you building a system around it, but you need a special mother board, big power supply and lots of heatsinks. But you gain nothing in performance eg my e3 is the same processor Sophos use in their topend models.

Also it is not a developer issue it is a marketing issue.

Please let Tim demonstrate PFSense to you.

Ian

As a company, before we take on support of clients networks we put things through a PEN test, PFsense has always produced interesting results to say the least, it's good for a "home" protection and better than the NAT based solutions you had with the standard routers provided, but no where near good enough for the enterprise.

You have to think, what would you prefer?  An enterprise solution for home, albeit with some hardware limitations, or an open-source experiment for the home market.

@Michael Caplan

Sophos don't want your $50. More hassle than it is worth and I can well understand why they dropped it for UTM. One of the things I don't miss moving to XG is the 50 IP limit. In itself it was OK for a home network but as it is my 'playground' I quite often exceeded it testing new network setups. Ended up having to reinstall UTM each time it happened.

I don't agree it is 'easy' to verify whether Home is genuinely being used at 'Home' - which would also require more time and effort (which means money). Sophos put a cap on to prevent people using it illegally in large commercial environments.

I am grateful to be able to use it free at home. It also benefits Sophos (which is why they do it). From being able to use it and evaluate it at home, I have since become a Sophos partner and have several installations planned for customers.

I also really can't understand your view point. The current cap should allow you to use it in a home environment, even with 1Gb connections, for the forseeable future as long as you have the right spec hardware. What is the problem?

@Mike Scott

I've installed the home edition on both a 125 rev2 and a 430 (my current home kit). It can be tricky getting it to install on the installed SSD so I just replaced it with a new SSD and then installation was easy. A small SSD is cheap and I got the 430 for £300 which is cheaper than anything I could buy new of similar spec and it fits nicely in my rack (yes, I'm sad enough to have a rack at home). The only thing you lose is hardware specific support (for instance the LCD display doesn't show anything meaningful).

@Michael Caplan

Sophos don't want your $50. More hassle than it is worth and I can well understand why they dropped it for UTM. One of the things I don't miss moving to XG is the 50 IP limit. In itself it was OK for a home network but as it is my 'playground' I quite often exceeded it testing new network setups. Ended up having to reinstall UTM each time it happened.

I don't agree it is 'easy' to verify whether Home is genuinely being used at 'Home' - which would also require more time and effort (which means money). Sophos put a cap on to prevent people using it illegally in large commercial environments.

I am grateful to be able to use it free at home. It also benefits Sophos (which is why they do it). From being able to use it and evaluate it at home, I have since become a Sophos partner and have several installations planned for customers.

I also really can't understand your view point. The current cap should allow you to use it in a home environment, even with 1Gb connections, for the forseeable future as long as you have the right spec hardware. What is the problem?

@Mike Scott

I've installed the home edition on both a 125 rev2 and a 430 (my current home kit). It can be tricky getting it to install on the installed SSD so I just replaced it with a new SSD and then installation was easy. A small SSD is cheap and I got the 430 for £300 which is cheaper than anything I could buy new of similar spec and it fits nicely in my rack (yes, I'm sad enough to have a rack at home). The only thing you lose is hardware specific support (for instance the LCD display doesn't show anything meaningful).

Thanks for you time I just wanted a simple answer; no the limitation is still present.  No clue why you guys argue that the limitation is acceptable; it’s not for me.  I’ve stated it multiple times, but you guys seem programmed that limitations are okay.  Cool; it’s not for me...

No point in continuing this post any longer.   Thanks again for your time.  Please mark this post as closed or delete it.

Not arguing, I just accept what Sophos offer as do I accept what the other vendors offer.

Each individual's requirement is different and enjoy whatever fits your requirements best.  I'm still determining what's meets my needs best, but then I also like to explore vendors offerings.

Was in reply to the others not you; as you seem to be in a similar boat of testing new packages.  Good luck on figuring out what works best for you.  

Flyncalpoly said:

No clue why you guys argue that the limitation is acceptable; it’s not for me.

It isn't about limitations. It's about "is it sufficient to satisfactorily do the job I need doing".

Every solution has limitations. You can always specify more cpu, more memory, more bandwidth etc. If Sophos limited you to 100 CPUs and 1TB memory would you be happy or would it still be 'limited'? If you were going to provide an XG solution to a customer would you specify the biggest possible (at enormous cost) because it has the least limitations? Of course not, you specify what will do the job.

Will the free solution that Sophos offer do the job for a home user? Yes. That's what matters!

With the limitations I wouldn’t offer it as an option to home based clients.  With being unable to fully test the software to its full capacity no I wouldn’t spec out to my business clients.  Again it’s a choice the company makes.

Flyncalpoly said:

With the limitations I wouldn’t offer it as an option to home based clients.  With being unable to fully test the software to its full capacity no I wouldn’t spec out to my business clients.  Again it’s a choice the company makes.

I'm sure Sophos will be sad to lose your business.

Thanks for trolling.  If people like you are representing the company then I have no desire to be part of this community. Have a nice day troll

Flyncalpoly said:

Thanks for trolling.  If people like you are representing the company then I have no desire to be part of this community. Have a nice day troll

I'm sorry, but, What the fsck? Seriously?

I can't believe I'm wasting my time writing this. This really looks like a weak troll post from you.

In the beginning of the thread you said;

Flyncalpoly said:

there is no reason to limit hardware if it is proven that the UTM is in a home location.

How in the world will you prove to Sophos that  your currently only running XG on a Home environment? Do you really think they will put a lot of people and money just to inspect all Home users 24/7/365 to know if their running the Home version within their homes, instead of a small office? Just so the home users can have no hardware limit.

You should be grateful there even is a home license from the beginning.

No other else NGFW vendor in the market does this.

Flyncalpoly said:

There are tons of other UTM packages out there that don't have hardware limitations.

And all of them doesn't even come close to what Sophos XG is currently capable off. Most of them are half baked solutions, and open source packages that have no interconnection between themselves.

Look at pfsense, you can't have an IPS such as Suricata or Snort inspecting decrypted content from Squid, just because both of them inspect traffic direct from the interface.

Flyncalpoly said:

The limitation could be removed with the annual plan of $50/yr for the home premium.

As stated by rfcat_vk, the old astaro had a home license for $50, but the administration cost has way too high to maintain, It's much simpler giving it out for free to the home users.

Flyncalpoly said:

What you see is fair is your opinion; what I see is fair as a power home user / home lab is different.

If you were a Home lab user, or a power users you would know exactly the performance you can get from XG. Even for today standards you can get 1Gbit/s of inspected traffic with XG fairly easy.

The only problem here are people running CPU's from 2010 and expecting to push 1Gbit on their old dual core celeron that even on 2010 standards has already too weak.

Flyncalpoly said:

The limitation isn't necessary, and pushes people away from the product, which it has done to me.

The limitation is necessary, so companies don't abuse it.

Flyncalpoly said:

It doesn't seem this product is in primetime for power users.

Complete the opposite, just give yourself a time and learn what XG is capable of.

Flyncalpoly said:

Would you use a faster computer if there were no hardware limitations?  If you had a 7th generation intel with 16gb of ram, a 3 year old computer, would you want hardware limitations on it? You don't see a problem; I do.  No argument in the world will change my mind that there shouldn't be hardware limitations built into the software..

Why do you even want a i5, i7 just wasting energy and being loud as fsck while a 2018 Celeron that barely uses 20W can do 1Gbit with SSL/TLS Decryption?

Flyncalpoly said:

Any who this seems pointless at this time; as the developers will not unlock the software package for users.  Therefore, I will continue to use PFSense rather than giving the Sophos developers a yearly subscription fee.  Good luck to others; maybe they will finally realize this is the right thing in V20.

https://www.enterpriseav.com/SFv-4C6.asp

The current price for a 4C6GB license, with the same features of the home version will cost you $7000 USD/Year, do you really want more as a home user?

Flyncalpoly said:

With the limitations I wouldn’t offer it as an option to home based clients.  With being unable to fully test the software to its full capacity no I wouldn’t spec out to my business clients.  Again it’s a choice the company makes.

One thing, Home Users here are the minority. And if you really wanted to offer XG for your clients, you could simply become a partner and get NFR licenses for demonstration.

“you could simply become a partner and get NFR licenses for demonstration.“

Thank you had I known this I would have gone this route in the beginning.

If and when I can get Vodafone Gigafast etc.  I'm mulling a £500 budget for a device, I spent £300 on a UDM-Pro before selling it a month later.  They're now going for crazy money for what is such a flawed edge device.

Tempted to sell the Pondesk unit I bought and get the i3 back into service.  The SFF PC with 4 port Intel NIC is just sat in the spares pile at the moment.  Not sure the total power consumption of the unit.

This is a comparison between the two units I have atm re CPU - http://cpuspecs.com/E3845-vs-i3-6100T