~Toughbooktalk~

Team,

Please read below. There are two options I feel we have here:

OVERVIEW:

Most of you have been following the other thread with regards to the fiber upgrade. This is completed and even though I goofed up the first time, we are more than good now running live on it!

However, it never ends. I knew I would need a new firewall with this new line but it does cost $426.38 + shipping to get it. Below is the progression of firewalls for the increased amount of traffic that we will now get with the new line. I have nothing to hide here and CANNOT afford this right now. I have the time line to show the progression and improvement we've had for the last 7 years here thanks to you all!

April 2009 - Site launched with a Netgear FVS336G with a 27M/3M Comcast line
June 2014 - Upgraded to Netgear SRX5308 with a 100M/20M Comcast line.
December 2014 - 6 months later Comcast failed miserably with outages and I was forced to switch to ATT on the fiber 50M/5M line. Best thing that could have happened. We have had ZERO outages due to the ISP failing with ATT!
April 2015 - upgraded to a USED ZyXEL USG50 enterprise grade UTM (Unified threat management) firewall due to increased DOS attacks, spam and other problems with Netgear support
September 2016 (now) - Upgraded to STRAIGHT 1GB/1GB PON fiber

Short and simple OPTION 1:
What it boils down to is this: The USED ZyXEL USG50 ENTERPRISE model firewall that I paid $150 for out of pocket has really helped over the old Netgear small business firewalls that were running it before as far as the DOS and attacking this site is CONSTANTLY under has really improved and helped things!

I KNEW this firewall wouldn't be enough as it tops out at 225Mb/s. To be fair I NEVER could have imagined that I was actually going to get a straight fiber 1GB/1GB connection!

I have attached the vendor pricing quote from Synnex showing the pricing (Cheaper than everywhere else). There will be about $25 in freight as well so it'll end up being $451.38. Donations will be needed to fund this.

Short and simple OPTION 2:
We can keep the firewall we have now and have approximately 195MB MAX with the firewall we have now (Screenshot attached of that speed with the current firewall) of the 800M-1G we have available with the new line which is STILL more than enough and 39 times faster than the old line.

For this ZERO donations would be needed.

IN FINAL:

Can we please vote below on your option as a whole as to rather or not we even want to upgrade this to take FULL advantage of the new line?

What's your average bandwidth consumption anyway? Do you run a traffic grapher or MRTG?

Considering another ....donation...auction thing. My head is full right now. I can't think it through.

kode-niner wrote:What's your average bandwidth consumption anyway? Do you run a traffic grapher or MRTG?

Typically not more than 300GB/month which would indicate that we wouldn't need the new firewall... However, the more you have the more you typically use.

Here is a screenshot from when I reset the bandwidth meter from the firewall when the 1GB line was installed on the 15th.

Egress on port 80 is what we're looking at here. If you do the math it's only like 30GB/month at this rate but that is not including any large file downloads and things of that nature with the download portion of TBT and the FTP server.

I'd rather take a screenshot on 10/15/16 and compare results

Does anyone have any opinions here?

I have already received a single $50 donation which I will refund or accept depending on everyone's ideas?

I could have just said we need this please donate but this isn't a dictatorship and I do truly value everyone's opinions.

Maybe some or all of you guys are unsure because of your lack of understanding? I apologize if that is the case. It's very hard to communicate to those that don't do this kind of thing.

Thanks again for your time!

If you want a vote then I vote to upgrade to match new cable.....whatever that means.

Gigs per month isn't exactly the most useful metric in this context. Do you have a Mb/s graph or 95th percentile numbers? Just curious.

kode-niner wrote:Gigs per month isn't exactly the most useful metric in this context. Do you have a Mb/s graph or 95th percentile numbers? Just curious.

Yes I sure do!

Have a look:

Port 1 = external (wan) interface.

Port 3 = internal (LAN1) interface to core LAN switch #1. - The server is on this switch. You can see it spiking up to 124MB too. That would be signs that someone with a 100MB Comcast line would be downloading something. It obviously didn't max the firewall out

Port 4 = internal (LAN1) interface 2 to core LAN switch #2. - other stuff on this such as security cameras and other things at my house

I'd be keen to keep an eye on this over the next few days too!

Sadlmkr wrote:If you want a vote then I vote to upgrade to match new cable.....whatever that means.

Noted Jeff! I agree with you on this as well!

I'm with Jeff, vote for upgrade, I'll kick in some $ if that's the direction. Hell I'll put in $50, I've gotten more than that in help and info from you guys anyway. There is enough users here to get to the goal.

Even though we can get by on the old used equipment that will throttle the ability of full usage, I think it is better to get new equipment to match the capability of the fiber, as well as the latest threat management.