PSA: Don't use Dell SonicWall Firewalls!!

[IT Hamster]

Hello All,

Many of you may know this already, but this is for those that are looking to use a SonicWall or are stuck with one in your setup.

I have had immense quality issues when routing VoIP traffic through a Dell SonicWall. I've used all sorts of different models and each one of them has caused me nothing short of absolute anguish.

Symptoms: Choppy/clipping audio, blank voicemails, dropped calls. etc...

Attempts to turn off DPI and STI doesn't help either. I've since switched over to a Draytek Firewall and my VoIP is now crisp, stable, and everything works nicely.

This may be old news to you VoIP veterans, but I'd like to think this will hopefully prevent someone from getting buried in customer complaints and troubleshooting themselves into a corner.

P.S. this isn't a guerilla advertising scheme for Draytek- I'm sure there are a lot of other firewall vendors whose products work great. Moral of the story is to not use Dell SonicWall.

 

[craigreilly]

I have had nothing but success using SonicWalls with 3cx.

 

[IT Hamster]

What model SonicWalls are you using? What kinds of things are you doing to ensure your VoIP traffic isn't being muddled by the SonicWall? How many concurrent calls are you running through it and how many end points (phones)?

I believe you when you say it's successful, i'm just curious to know what you've done to get that success.

I've had nothing but nightmare with their products. They work on small scale deployments (think 10-15 people with 4 concurrent calls max) but anything bigger than that and DPI/SPI destroy my RTP streams.

 

[IT Hamster]

I should note that SonicWalls in an environment that use a PRI aren't problematic, but then the traffic doesn't traverse the Sonicwall.

 

[lneblett]

Sonicwall has a hotfix specifically for 3CX that vastly improves the performance. I configured a SW about 30 days ago (TZ215w) for a client who had been using Ring Central. SW installed the hotfix as the client had a maintenance contract. I did some other minor configuration using the SW configuration guide as found in the blog. The client is thrilled with 3CX and how well is works. He has virtually 0 issues since. He had his normal IT guy try and configure the modem who insisted that he could make it work, despite me pointing him to the blog and the hotfix. 8 hours later, I called SW and all was well.

 

[adrianc]

Sonicwall has a hotfix specifically for 3CX that vastly improves the performance. I configured a SW about 30 days ago (TZ215w) for a client who had been using Ring Central. SW installed the hotfix as the client had a maintenance contract. I did some other minor configuration using the SW configuration guide as found in the blog. The client is thrilled with 3CX and how well is works. He has virtually 0 issues since. He had his normal IT guy try and configure the modem who insisted that he could make it work, despite me pointing him to the blog and the hotfix. 8 hours later, I called SW and all was well.

Hi
Do you know the hotfix / firmware version that's installed now?
We've got a few odd quality problems and I know there was an old hotfix for NAT configuration but that's was probably about a year old and we've since installed much newer 5.8 & 5.9 firmwares.
Thanks
Adrian

 

[lneblett]

Call SonicWALL. I do not recall the firmware version, but it was a later version and the instruction still apply. When they installed it, it was the version number and also indicated with hotfix xxxx.

 

[adrianc]

Call SonicWALL. I do not recall the firmware version, but it was a later version and the instruction still apply. When they installed it, it was the version number and also indicated with hotfix xxxx.

We called SonicWall and they said there's no current hotfix for 3CX / VoIP as it's been included into the general / early release firmware now.

 

[craigreilly]

What model SonicWalls are you using? What kinds of things are you doing to ensure your VoIP traffic isn't being muddled by the SonicWall? How many concurrent calls are you running through it and how many end points (phones)?

I believe you when you say it's successful, i'm just curious to know what you've done to get that success.

I've had nothing but nightmare with their products. They work on small scale deployments (think 10-15 people with 4 concurrent calls max) but anything bigger than that and DPI/SPI destroy my RTP streams.

Sorry I can not provide particulars as it was a previous employer and I have no records on the model numbers or deployment size.

 

[bardissi]

http://www.3cx.com/blog/voip-howto/sonicwall-important-update/