ndennie,
I've definately seen these firewall devices before, but didn't really know who made them.
The specific model you have seems to be more than adaquate for the amount of users your network has.
Its highly advised to make use of the performance monitoring utilities the system has to see if there is any specific task that might be bringing the device to its knees.
Moving away from your LAN, towards your WAN, what type of connection to your ISP does the company have? Also, is the slow down permanently or during peak hours? It could be possible that your ISP is not able to cope during these peak hours, therefore everyone’s connection slows down.
As you can see, there are quite a few different scenarios, so in order to make some sence out of everything and put things into prospective, you need to follow a step by step checkup to determine where the problem is, and then see how it can be fixed.
My proposal is this:
Monitor the network response and Internet activity using the firewall's tools. Try and see when the slowdowns are happening and during which hours.
While the Internet connection is slow, try and connect one workstation after the firewall, effectively bypassing the firewall and connecting it straight to the Internet. Test the speed to see if the results are the same or different and make a note of it.
At the same time, see if you can run a packet sniffer (available in our download section) and monitor the traffic that’s going in and out of the network... you might find yourself surprised in some cases when you figure that users are doing things they are not suppose to, and believe me, it happens!
Once you complete the above steps, I'm sure you will have a better understanding on what is causing these slowdowns.
You can then let us know and we can take it from there.
Keep us informed on the situation.
Cheers
