SonicWall TZ200: Good mix of connectivity and security

The SonicWall TZ200 is the middle product between the TZ100 and the TZ210, and the smallest and lightest appliance in this test. White and bright and about the size of a CD wallet, it looks more like an Apple product than a firewall. Prices for SonicWall products are hard to pin down because, while the firewall and router have no client license fees, adding support for security features such as enhanced client anti-virus and anti-spyware, VPN Client Windows, UTM SSL VPNs, and a few other options need user licenses. Figure around the $400 to $450 range to start, depending on whether you add wireless support, and tally up your options from there.

Supersize your WAN

One reason the TZ200 is small is because it has only five ports which can be arranged in a variety of ways. Labeled X0-X4, X0 is defined for a LAN and X1 for a WAN. The other three can be configured as WAN, LAN, or DMZ ports, so it's possible to connect four broadband feeds to this one box if double-double redundancy is important. LAN ports support 10/100 Fast Ethernet only.

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The SonicWall TZ200 is the middle product between the TZ100 and the TZ210, and the smallest and lightest appliance in this test. White and bright and about the size of a CD wallet, it looks more like an Apple product than a firewall. Prices for SonicWall products are hard to pin down because, while the firewall and router have no client license fees, adding support for security features such as enhanced client anti-virus and anti-spyware, VPN Client Windows, UTM SSL VPNs, and a few other options need user licenses. Figure around the $400 to $450 range to start, depending on whether you add wireless support, and tally up your options from there.

Supersize your WAN

One reason the TZ200 is small is because it has only five ports which can be arranged in a variety of ways. Labeled X0-X4, X0 is defined for a LAN and X1 for a WAN. The other three can be configured as WAN, LAN, or DMZ ports, so it's possible to connect four broadband feeds to this one box if double-double redundancy is important. LAN ports support 10/100 Fast Ethernet only.

Maximum firewall throughput is advertised at 100Mbps, which was confirmed in a recent Network World test by Joel Snyder. The unit supports up to 50 IPSec VPN tunnels along with 50 SSL VPN clients.

The only things in the box were the unit, the power supply and an Ethernet patch cable.

Wizards help with setup, starting with the PortShield interface to set port assignments, configure the firewall to provide public access to internal servers, and to set VPN policies. Nice touch, especially since no manual was included with the product on paper or CD. If dual-WAN connections aren't enough, you can buy two TZ200's and run them in High Availability mode. You can also connect a 3G modem to the USB port in case you want a backup for both WAN connections.

Installation and configuration

Help is only available online, which seems a bit cheeky when selling a router. The admin screen has a question mark icon in the upper right corner, and the help pages that appear are context-sensitive and well written for the non-tech. Unfortunately, many pages respond with a 404 error. Once we saw a message saying "online help for this SonicWall product has not yet been released." Surely that's a linking error, because this unit has been available for more than a year. When you hover over an icon, you're often rewarded with an information bubble.

The setup wizard appears the first time you connect to the admin screen through your browser, and can be launched any time thereafter. Using a default address range of 192.168.168.x, the TZ200 provides client addresses through its DHCP server. This unit is the only one that recommended a strong password during the setup. You make your port assignments during setup, but we configured the system initially with a single WAN and added the second later.

All the common broadband connection types are available, but the automatic connect feature worked. After we elected to skip registering the unit, we rebooted and our network clients had Internet access.