Flex H, a rant

MarkoD

We're still running on USG series firewalls in multiple sites because FLEX H series is unstable and we didn't buy USG FLEX (non-H) series because they will eventually become EOL devices in the near future (IMHO) since ZyXEL will focus on the newest H line (that's what companies do).

I've been monitoring these forums for a while now and you guys have my deepest sympathies working with the H-series.

If I would guess, ZyXEL decided to implement a completely new OS (makes sense) but released it too early and made us all beta-testers. It reminds me of Microsoft, who let go all the testing team and outsourced it (from India) and tried to use AI-driven automated testing for Windows 10-11, thus making users betatesters and this also explains why Windows 10 needed a lot of fixing to become production-ready (Windows 11 is not yet there, but making progress).

So I guess something similar happened at ZyXEL - some old-but-knowledgeable employees got ditched, maybe uOS development got outsourced to a different company/country, perhaps the QA team got ditched and oursourced? I guess we will never find out, but I think a lot of people will either switch to another vendor or wait a couple of years to buy another ZyXEL firewall.

ticsystems

If the flex 200h and 100h seem unstable to you, the 700H are a disaster... Having to disable UTM services to avoid blocking. The CPU is constantly at 100%.... Random reboots.... I have 3 and in no case is it a production Firewall. Not even with 1.30 is it functional.

DanniKool

You are absolutely right ticsystems.

Sadly we have a 700H in production and with another 700H in standby mode to implement to HA when firmware developed. I've been in constant dialog with Zyxel support for almost a year now to solve various issues. Firmware v1.30 has some hughe in and outgoing internet delay issues. If R&D team doesn't solve this ASAP within the next few days, we will replace this product with an older model or another brand. We've had it!

ticsystems

https://community.zyxel.com/en/discussion/comment/71471#Comment_71471

I downgraded to 1.21 because of internet issues. I thought it was just a firewall bug.

ESupport

Thanks for the feedback DanniKool and ticsystems. We are planning to give the new H-Series a new try next year but from what i hear the stabilityissues aren't remotely resolved and that's nearly a year later. I'm so disappointed. I would really use the new hardware (faster, SFP+, openvpn) but with the current state of µOS we will still wait. Zyxel, FIX THIS.