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

That makes no sense to me at all.

What possible reason would you have for a home machine to have more hardware resource than the limitations?  I've got a home license running on a I5-3470 Dell Optiplex 3010 - old machine, it has an SSD and have installed a hardware based dual network card from HP.

And it works better than anything else I've come across.

I also supply through my consultancy practice to several customers the Sophos XG and SG firewalls, and we have several virtual machines, most of which are set with 4GB RAM and 2vCPU - and for offices with 50 users these work well - the CPU passthrough is usually a E5-2697v4 running on Dell R730 hardware...

The point is, the 6GB RAM and 4vPUC is very generous, and if configured correctly not an issue for most users, let alone home users.

I tend to use the home machine for what it's intended for, and this protects the perimeter of my home very well, I also use it as a machine where I can apply patches and test things before I roll out to customers.

I am very grateful that Sophos have the decency to be able to offer a FREE product such as this to home users.

The limitation could be removed with the annual plan of $50/yr for the home premium.  What you see is fair is your opinion; what I see is fair as a power home user / home lab is different.  The limitation isn't necessary, and pushes people away from the product, which it has done to me.  Thanks for your response, and your need to belittle my desires.  It doesn't seem this product is in primetime for power users.

I sill fail to see where there is a problem, even for power home users...

If I can push this through an Azure machine, over Express Route and then out of the ISP - it has 4GB RAM and 4vCPU, and not get about 25% CPU, I don't think there is a problem.

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.

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.

It would depend on the task in-hand, but comparing desktop PC's with firewalls is not really the same, although you would specify both to do the job in hand, for example you would put in a really decent graphics card if the end user was editing video, working on photos most of the time - also the lifecycle of a PC is about 5 years, and software is 3 years in general.

With a firewall, you can specify this dependent on your networking requirements, the throughput of the home version, for a standard user, or even a power user at home is more than sufficient for the task it's designed to do?

More to the point, if you're specifying this in Azure, would you put in the fastest, most expensive costing machine just....because?

Why would you have a machine that's capable of delivering 40Gb connection from the internet, when at the moment the fastest home is about 1Gb?  Just think about the cost of all that wattage with the CPU and RAM costs...if a machine is using 100w, that's going to cost 38p a day (16p/kwh) / £11.78 per month - so wouldn't it make more sense to put in a CPU with 4-cores and lower the RAM budget to half that?

One day it may get to that performance, but by then I can guarantee you that the hardware you're using now, will be in a landfill.

I'm currently testing Untangle, which I have paid the $50 license for, but I expect I'll be switching back to Sophos XG Home edition.  I agree with Tim's comments TBH and I'm currently running it on an Atom quad core PC, 4GB Intel NICs with 4GB that I paid circa £200 for.

I do like pfsense, both are a good product, but I'd still use Sophos XG home.

My only wish is that applying the home product to an appliance was supported.  

What is guaranteed is that Untangle, Sophos XG or pfsense is better than the Unifi UDM-Pro junk.

You seem to fail to understand, there is no limitation on CPU performance, jus the number of real cores.

As BLS has pointed out most home user hardware is way more powerful that the top of the range Sophos hardware.

The recommendation for home users is 4 real CPU cores running as fast as you can. I7s are a waste of money and generate too much heat, you need CPUs that do not have extra features like a maths co-processor which adds no performance value.

Ian

Hi Mike,

you can apply the home licence to the Sophos hardware, takes a little bit of doing and I even think there are KBAs on the subject and there are plenty of threads in these forums.

Ian

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.