Signed up to get this and it seems to be working very well!! Web content filtering is running fine and I created a AV rule to scan everything from Wan to LAN and don't see any slowdown at all. Before it would cut speeds down to a third of what they were.

Much better GUI with some very well thoughtout enhancements.

Excellent!

Thanks for the comments, I'm looking forward to the new interface & speed ups!

I had disabled AV scanning due to slow-down, I had "assumed" it was due to a hardware limitation, I am very glad to know that it was just a s/w bottleneck that is now being removed!

Thanks,
Jim

Alas, I had some major glitches and had to go back to 7.5. The 8.0 install was done overnight and, the next morning, I couldn't connect to my POP server. Tech had me make a rule to allow each computer to connect through Port 110. That still didn't work. I use Eudora 7. So after fiddling, I changed to "Generic Properties ==> Secure Sockets when Sending ==> If Available, STARTTLS"

and

Incoming Mail ==> Secure Sockets when Receiving ==> Required, Alternate Port

Other combinations didn't work nor did my original settings. When checking mail, I got a message about whether to accept a security
certificate permanently, which I said yes to and everything was fine after that.

So I solved that problem, but it took two hours between help from Tech (who, semi-correctly, said it was my ISPs fault) -- but there's no question for me it happened as a result of the upgrade. I don't understand ports & security certificates enough to know why, though. Just that I solved that one, at least. Anyone has any explanation, I'd appreciate it.

Then, I tried to do a wireless connect of my notebook (Vista home). That didn't work. The log showed a series of connect and disconnects, I assume as it kept trying to obtain an IP address. Another long chat with Tech. I use WPA Personal, and the message on the notebook was that the security key was incorrect. I tried several new passwords, none worked. However, I was able to connect on both Open & WEP, just not WPA.

At that point, I'd spent 5 hours wrestling with this and decided it's not ready for prime time, for me anyway. I'd really like to see how the spam filter etc. works, but asked that I be rolled back to 7. They did that that night.

Everything works fine now. I'll hope those bugs are solved by the time it's rolled out for everyone.

Any thoughts or comments from others would be appreciated, though I'm not likely to try again for awhile.

Thanks,

George

Thanks for the comments George!

I use ZA ISS s/w as well and one of their old upgrades somehow broke Eudora also... I never did figure that one out... I just waited till the next release of the s/w and it was OK then....

I'll be on the look out!

Jim

Good feedback, George. Of course, this is what an early release program is all about.

I know that I have had issues with my POP mail since the update, but it does work. I just seem to have a lot hanging sessions.

Has anyone had problems with a PS/3 in a DMZ zone on Firmware 8?

I'm having problems staying connected to the PS/3 gaming store/service... Not to mention it complains of a Type 3 Nat (similar to a Xbox 360s complaint on Nat type)...

Ideally id like to open up some ports for it and put it out of the DMZ but its unstable in the DMZ.. so im not opening that can of worms.

Also has anyone run into a Low Memory Error on the Za100 8 firmware? Has happened to me twice already..

I have reported a low memory error on 8.0.19 and received an email today advising me this issue was resolved in the future firmware.

On 8.0.19 for a few days now and so far so good. The interface, especially status and log displays, are much improved.
I'm wondering if there are any docs to answer a few minor questions tho, like what is "HA" on the status page, and when editing a network object what does "Exclude this computer from 802.1x Port Security" mean? I have not yet located a downloadable user guide for V8.

Yes, what is HA??? I couldn't figure that out either.

I think HA is High Availability. This is used with the SafeOffice 500 and powerpack. You can use two safeoffice devices with one IP to get redundancy with your firewall.

Yes that is correct. High Availability is the ability to load share and reduce the potential of any down time. Unless Sofaware has another meaning for HA, that is the security industry meaning.

Sound like I should stay away from the update button until I read the release notes (Still only V7.5 available on the check point support site). Mr Admin, where can we get the release notes for 8.0?

I normally wait for the first minor firmware release, 8.1 in this case to make sure that most bugs are fixed. I don't want to do the QA testing for Check Point with the .0 code. Im not just a home network, I work at home and need reliability.

Great comments though guys. Keep them coming.

Probs today with antispam hanging. Content, block and IP rep check were all enabled but set to monitor only. Router uptime was approx. 5 days. Multiple machines using different email clients (Outlook and Thunderbird) timing out on multiple pop servers.
Went thru the following sequence to correct:
1. Turned off IP rep check, still no good. Connection to service center is OK, http traffic still flowing OK.
Status shows all 0's, even while connections to pop servers are hung.
Log showed an Email.Phishing virus detected so something is going on but it never completes to the view of the clients.
2. Restart Router
3. Now pop mail OK
I didn't think to save off the logs. I will make a better effort to capture some output and turn off the other antispam filters one by one if it recurs.

UPDATE
Happened again this evening. Looks like enabling the content based filtering is drastically reducing the throughput; logs show small messages taking 30-40 secs. each; I suspect the larger messages are causing the timeouts.
Turned the filter off & on and again can pull down messages. Downloading about 10 30k messages I was able to see CPU hit 47% but the time to capture that was very small, so I wonder if it is CPU bound, or if over time it is needing more and more CPU , as a reset seems to correct.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: nerath,

Sounds like the same issue I had with one POP server that has two accounts. I would have a certain email that hung it up at a certain point then downloaded at about 3k per minute until the server finally timed out. I worked around it by enabling SSL POP access at port 995.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Texas Rocket,

OK. Just updated to 8.0.24 and the problems I had with WiFi connection have disappeared -- notebook (Vista home) connected immediately. Only a few hours now, but no other problems apparent.

POP email is also connecting to all ISPs without obvious problems.

To their credit, Tech contacted me via email on the trouble ticket and suggested I upgrade the firmware again (I'd rolled back to 7) -- that the problems should have disappeared. Good work.

Many thanks,

George

I am assuming you need to be part of the program to get this firmware update? I have applied today, would like to take a look at it.

Just got the upgraded firmware. Must say, first impressions are very nice. Some solid additions to functionality, will explore more later. Is there anywhere we can go to download a users manual with the new information included?

Embedded NGX 8EA Release Notes

Thanks!

One of the user-suggested enhancements to the firmware has been the ability set the priority for certain users to obtain an internet access license... i.e. if all of the 5 or 15 licenses are in use but a system administrator logs on then the router would revoke the least recently used node license and give it to the newly active system admin. (hey ... we admins should get something out of this eh? ;-)

Does anyone know if this suggested feature has made it into 8.0.xx ?

Thanks,
Jim