I have a Sonicwall TZ170 firewall which has operated as expected for the most part for the past 6 months.
The setup is standard:- PC - TZ170 - DSL300 modem - ADSL line. All equipment is powered via a UPS.
However, it has shown one problem in that time. Twice the TZ170 has gone into a state where the LAN side is operating normally but the WAN side is not responding. You can log into the TZ170 and access the log etc etc as normal but all connection with the WAN is dead. The log shows that the TZ170 is going through PPoE discovery routines to get a connection with my ISP but no connection results.
The only cure seems to be to power off, wait a short time and then power back up. This starts a PPoE discovery routine and the firewall is soon back in business. All information in the log is lost.
Has anyone come across this problem with the TZ170? I would appreciate any suggestions to get the TZ170 working again without going through the power off power on process - I would like to keep the log data if possible.
I asked Sonicwall if they had heard of this problem but they had not. Their suggestion was to upgrade to the latest firmware. There is a problem with this as to do so you need to have a current support contract - without a current support contract you can't get to the download area on their web site to download the latest firmware. This is not cheap - the current price for a 12 month support contract is A$220 (about US$170). To be fair the support contract also offers return to factory repair.