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All-in-one security appliances such as Draytek’s Vigorpro 5510 are designed to be both cheaper and easier to manage than separate firewall, anti-virus, anti-spam and other tools, and it certainly scores well as far as cost is concerned. However, we didn’t find the Draytek appliance anywhere near as simple to set up and use as we would have liked.
You get a small rackmountable box with a clutch of connectors and LEDs at the front. Five of these are Gigabit Ethernet ports for Lan attachment, with two 10/100Mbits/sec Ethernet ports alongside for internet connectivity. That’s typically done via Ethernet ADSL or cable modems, with policy-based load balancing of the Wan connections as standard.
There’s also a USB port, which can be used either to share a printer or provide an alternative second Wan interface via a 3G mobile phone or modem.
The software is Draytek’s own Dray OS, featuring a stateful inspection firewall able to examine packets in more detail than the firewalls in most ordinary routers. It also supports VPN (virtual private networks) remote access using both conventional tunnelling protocols/clients and SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption, where remote users connect using a browser.
Site-to-site VPN connections can also be configured, and up to 200 conventional tunnels and 50 SSL users supported.
A fairly basic web interface is used to manage the Vigorpro with a wizard to help you get started. You also need to decide which anti-virus software to use with two scanners available - one from Draytek and the other Kaspersky. Only one can be activated - the Draytek licence supplied lasting for three years and the Kaspersky just one.
Running costs are very reasonable. Expect to pay about £100 ex Vat per year when either of the anti-virus licences run out. You’ll also need to budget £90 ex Vat per year to add anti-spam protection, courtesy of Commtouch technology, plus £30 or more (depending on number of users) to extend the 30-day trial of the Surfcontrol content-filtering tool supplied.
Separate profiles are used to configure each of these options, making it possible to customise the setup to suit a variety of organisations, but it’s important to remember that inspection and filtering is all done at the internet gateway.
So, for example, mobile users still need local firewall and anti-virus protection when they connect to other networks. And there are no quarantine facilities on the Vigorpro. Suspected spam messages are simply flagged in the subject line, calling for extra setup work to trap flagged messages, either at the mail server or on client systems.
We didn’t find the Vigorpro 5510 particularly difficult to configure, and were impressed by the ability to block access to categorised websites and prevent use of instant messaging applications. However, a high level of technical expertise is required to get the best out of this product and the accompanying manuals are poorly translated, making them difficult to follow.
Some of the options, such as using a 3G modem, are barely documented or explained at all, and the management interface could be easier too.
It’s far from a plug-and-play solution and most small businesses will need expert help putting it to work. That said, the Vigorpro 5510 can deliver what’s claimed and, once configured, provide small businesses with a good level of protection against common network threats.
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