Hi everyone, one of our clients has gone bust and as a result we have decomissioned their T55.
I am currently studying network+ and shortly after the summer will be studying for my Watchguard local exam through work (all our clients have watchguards and I use this frequently for rules, snat setup ect), because of this they have said I can have the T55 to use and study with.
My question is whats the best way to use this as a learning/test resource within my home/lab network and do i need to do anything with transfer of ownership ect or am i ok to just factory reset it if i don’t need any of the subscription services and will be connecting into it via LAN?
tldr: ex company watchguard t55 at home what can i do with it
TYI
You must get it’s feature key regardless of current or expired. When you reset it, you’ll need to put it in, or let it phone home to get it.
If the feature key is current, you get all the regular features, subscription access and updates.
If it’s expired, no subscription stuff, but can basically act like a dumb router with port forwarding, SSL VPN works etc
Use it to practice things like deny by default and https content inspection. There’s a lot of stuff you have to account for, and it takes time to figure it out and build templates you can apply to clients. You should have a startup config that gets applied to new clients and referenced as your template.
A T55 goes End of Life on 31 Dec 2025.
It is officially supported until then, which means that if you have a support contract, you can upgrade the firmware to the latest version, and will get hardware replacement should the firewall die during the support contract.
You should 1st add an account on the WatchGuard support site, and then open a support case with Customer Care to get this firewall assigned to your account. Take a photo of the model/serial info from the firewall and include it with your request for transfer. They will provide you with a new Feature Key for the firewall.
The URL below is the main support site. Select Login, and then Create new account. Then log in and select Create New Case, and for the “select record type” - select Customer Care.
https://www.watchguard.com/wgrd-support/overview
On the above URL, hover over “Support” and you will see a list of resources, including Documentation, Software Downloads, User Forum, Technical Search etc.
In the “Find Technical Answers” search box, results come from the online documentation, User Forum posts & Known Issues etc… I use this as my main search tool location, instead of the one for online documentation.
Also, even if the Feature key is expired, you get the full function of the non-subscription features or the firewall, which is way more than that for a dumb router. For example, you have the proxy policies, which includes deep packet inspection of selected packet types.
This is really sound advice thank you!