asked on

Easy solution for WIFi traffic shaping and bandwidth throttling needed.

I have been working with a site which is actually a open park area and there are 2 long range wifi antennas managed by an old sonicwall tz180 box. Right now there is no traffic shaping or bandwidth throttling management, so yesterday I was called in on the site and there was apparently not bandwidth left once I've joined the wifi antennas, 100k on download and 0 upload as I've logged in on the firewall there were about 50 clients connected to it, the minute I've changed the ssid password and dropped everyone else but me I was able to get 30mbps down and 5mbps up. So I was wondering here if someone can recommend me an easy way to manage bandwidth on this site, whether replacing the sonicwall box with something more inclined for bandwidth management, there is no computers on this site so I have to use a stand alone solution hardware appliance. One antenna is a UBNT and the other one is a meraki which I understand it may have some good resources but I did not have access to its console.

Thanks for any help.

Blue Street Tech

I'd recommend a new SonicWALL appliance w/SonicPOINTS. The new NGFWs (Next Generation Firewalls) dwarf the old ones and the competition IMO. They are super robust and can perform bandwidth management, throttling and load balancing. All TZs run with the same feature sets and come native with the Enhanced OS.

So depending on the location of the SonicWALL you could either get a TZ215W (currently being passed out but has built-in WiFi) or a new TZSOHO or TZ300 (but don't include built-in WiFi). Here are the specs so you can see which one will be the correct fit: http://www.sonicwall.com/us/en/products/TZ-Series.html#tab=comparison

As you can see they have made enormous improvements from the TZ180. The upgrade path from a TZ180 was the TZ215 and is now the TZ300/400. So if you go with the TZ215W then you may only need one SonicPoint, but if you go with a TZ300/400 you'll probably need two SonicPoints. Here is more info on the SonicPoints: http://www.sonicwall.com/us/en/products/sonicpoint-wireless-access-point-series.html#tab=Compare

Let me know if you have any questions!

jdff

ASKER

Diverseit, thank you for your help, however I intend to keep the 2 current antennas and just replace the firewall, I don't need a firewall with a built-in antenna, I'm looking for a firewall that I could manage the traffic and bandwidth of the local lan, nothing very expensive but something that can do the job for 50 to 100 clients. I like sonicwall but it does not have to be a sonicwall, any suggestions?

Blue Street Tech

I always recommend SonicWALLs...I feel they are the best bang for your buck and they have left the competition in the dust.

I'm currently on my mobile. ...so I can't use the configurator (no flash and HTML5 is failing): http://marketing.sonicwall.com/network-security-selector/

jdff

ASKER

I like Sonicwall too, what about a TZ105 will it be able to manage the lan traffic? I intend to leave bandwidth throttling up to 1.5mbps and ip isolation among the clients.

Blue Street Tech

TZ105 would not be adequate for 50-100 users. More like a TZ215 at the low end but more like a NSA 220 or NDA 2600 on the higher side. But aside from performance both will do everything that I talked about too, including the bandwidth throttling per IP.

jdff

ASKER

Have you done any of the traffic shaping configuration? I would like to prioritize voip and video streaming and block p2p, any suggestion in case you are more familiar with this technology?

Blue Street Tech

yes I'll post to some guides once I get in front of the PC

jdff

ASKER

Ok, thank you, I will wait for your input.

jdff

ASKER

Diverseit, any way to help me with some guides. I intend to configure this unit someone time this week.

Thank you.