Casey pounded out on the keyboard on or about 23-Dec-04 14:07:
If this is a home or small office with a Cable or DSL connection, a cable/dsl router should work just fine and not require any major configuring to get it up and running. If he has a more business type connection, like a 56K or T1, a more robust firewall would be best to get. There are different types out there and he would need to find out which would be best for him. There are routers, which would be considered a "hardware firewall", where configuration would be opening ports but no real logging or restrictions that could be applied. There are firewall hardened hardware/routers, such as the Cisco PIX Firewall or CheckPoint's Firewall-1 running on a Nokia IP router. These are probably the best choice for security as they run on the router's proprietary OS so not a lot possibility of hacks and needed to continually be patched for that reason. Then there are OS based standalone firewalls that have a known stripped down OS with the firewall application running on this. Smoothwall is an example of this as it uses a Linux kernel as it's underlying operating system. Then, of course, there are the desktop firewall softwares that run on the OS and protect individual systems. These would be like ZoneAlarm, Sygate, Kerio, et al. They all are good and each person has their favorite. You friend should look into one of the more stronger firewalls if this is a small office. Cisco, CheckPoint and others like them all have a wide range of sizes that they can certainly fit him into. As for the interception of emails, I'm not really sure how he can stop that. This may be something that he'd have to talk with his provider about so and work with them to work it out. This was a lot and if you need more info just ask. Good luck!
Jeff