"The
School District of Onalaska has used the SonicWALL since December of
1997. Our district consists of eight buildings, five academic and
three administrative. We have 800 nodes on our network with a 70% to
30% ratio of Macintosh to Compaq computers. Our connection to the
Internet consists of one T1 circuit.
Prior to the SonicWALL we were using CyberPatrol software
for web filtering in our computer labs only. Our ISP gave us three IP class C
address blocks for our entire district, due to routing and subnetting our free
IP numbers were exhausted. When I saw SonicWALL and its features I knew that
this would be a good addition to our network because:
- We had over 300 copies of CyberPatrol with a annual
renewal fee of $5.00 each. This meant that the firewall almost pays for
itself in one year.
- The renewal fee for CyberPatrol filtering was cut by
almost two thirds AND now all 800 nodes plus dial in users are protected by
the filter.
- We were able to implement NAT (Network Address
Translation) to expand our TCP/IP addresses, thus connecting all
workstations to the Internet.
- The management of the SonicWALL is a snap - any
workstation with a Java compatible Internet browser can manage SonicWALL.
- This product truly worked when first connected to the
network. There was no mystifying setup or configuration. A true plug and
play network device.
- Support was excellent, our network has an ATM backbone
running at OC3. Originally, the SonicWALL did not know what to make of all
of our LAN routers. Technical support provided custom patches for my
firewall within two hours. Although these patches are now standard with all
SonicWALL boxes I have never experienced this level of commitment to the
customer in over 10 years of working in the computer field.
- SonicWALL is a new product, lets face it usually that
means bugs and fixes. With the SonicWALL firewall this was NOT the case.
This firewall has been running reliably since its installation. This too is
unusual in the extreme.
- Customization is also easy, for example, logs can be
saved, sites can be added or removed from filtering on a case by case basis.
This makes network management far easier.
- With the new logging and reporting feature I can give
reports to the School Board and Administration. This shows how much data is
incoming and outgoing over the network, what sites are the most popular, and
what machines are accessing the most data.
- Updates to the filter are automatically completed
weekly. These changes affect all users on the network. This procedure
completed on the firewall alone means less downloading and easier network
management.
In conclusion, I highly recommend the SonicWALL firewall
to all K-12 districts with Internet connectivity and safety on their minds.
This product has consistently out performed my expectations and continues to
evolve into a first class network management tool."
Kevin Capwell
Data Systems Specialist
School District of Onalaska, Onalaska, WI
To learn more about the
SonicWALL firewall and its components and features,
please visit our web site dedicated to SonicWall by clicking on the button
below.
