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Watchguard gurus: Licensing question
JohnnyBiggles
Member Posts: 273
in Off-Topic
If anyone is familiar with these devices....
Can you use a Watchguard firewall once the Feature Keys expire (for features such as WebBlocker, spamBlocker, IPS, LiveSecurity, ApplicationControl, etc.)?? What I mean is, if you bought a used WG firewall off eBay or had one with a dead license (expired Feature Keys) could you use it for, lets say, a basic home network or even a testing lab as a simple router or even a manually configurable, stripped down firewall?.. or... would the unit be pretty worthless? There are several others that never expire... and I ask this because one time at an office where they used them, the license (feature key set) expired and noone could access the internet... but that may have been due to the policies which relied on WebBlocker and the other features that had expired. If you set up policies/blocks for your own listing of sites and traffic types, would it still work?
Can you use a Watchguard firewall once the Feature Keys expire (for features such as WebBlocker, spamBlocker, IPS, LiveSecurity, ApplicationControl, etc.)?? What I mean is, if you bought a used WG firewall off eBay or had one with a dead license (expired Feature Keys) could you use it for, lets say, a basic home network or even a testing lab as a simple router or even a manually configurable, stripped down firewall?.. or... would the unit be pretty worthless? There are several others that never expire... and I ask this because one time at an office where they used them, the license (feature key set) expired and noone could access the internet... but that may have been due to the policies which relied on WebBlocker and the other features that had expired. If you set up policies/blocks for your own listing of sites and traffic types, would it still work?
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Frostbite
Member Posts: 29 ■■■□□□□□□□
There's a policy setting in the WebBlocker software that blocks all Internet traffic if the WebBlocker server is unavailable. But yes, the only thing that stops working are the subscription services. The device still functions in a basic way. -
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meadIT
Member Posts: 581 ■■■■□□□□□□
You also won't be able to apply any software updates to the device, but like Frostbite said, the policies will still work, it's just the Subscription Services (Quarantine, SpamBlocker, WebBlocker, etc) that won't work.CERTS: VCDX #110 / VCAP-DCA #500 (v5 & 4) / VCAP-DCD #10(v5 & 4) / VCP 5 & 4 / EMCISA / MCSE 2003 / MCTS: Vista / CCNA / CCENT / Security+ / Network+ / Project+ / CIW Database Design Specialist, Professional, Associate -
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crrussell3
Member Posts: 561
We use Watchguard here at work and have found out the following:
1. You can use them without issue if the Subscription Services have expired. You need to make sure you don't have any policies utilizing said services, otherwise connectivity will fail. Also, we required them to reissue a license once as ours stopped working when the subscription services expired, so you may have to do that.
2. If you have a Live Security subscription (I think that is the name for their "hardware/software" support agreement) you can still get software updates. If you don't have that, you can't update the firmware. Otherwise they will work fine as is.
3. Watchguard units are perfect candidates (usually with minor modifications) to turn them into a pfsense appliance. I have one sitting at home waiting for me to do that to
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