hardware firewall concern...

• alpha :

Why not save a ton of money and go get a small pos computer and run ipcop, smoothwall amongst others for example?

And anyone who's not keeping current with updates/patchs deserves what they get.

Jason

A security component that cannot be updated to fix security problems is useless.

Wolfgang

First I know how you feel. My home office has 6 rackmounted (2U and 4U) servers and they are quite loud.

However, most "Appliances" are PCs! The only exception I can think of is the Cisco PIX which has no Hard drive...I guess that is the only real "appliance"

"Appliances" are: A companies rational to sell you THEIR software and THEIR hardware. In some ways it makes sense. It keeps their R&D low as they only need to support drivers for specific hardware. After all, they pick the hardware that goes into the "appliance". However, 99% of ALL so called "Appliances" are nothing more than a PC board with some form of linux....and some special software...

So, if you think that using an appliance will some how save you money because of reduced electricity...you will be wasting your time (and money).

I would go with a linux solution. Their firewalls (linux/FreeBSD) are quite good. Make sure the server you use is quiet...

Michael

Here! Here!

Appliances == A scam a company does to get you to buy a PC WITH their software.

Michael

I'm still using PCs to run the firewalls, but causing me much noise and high electricity fee. So I want a smaller & cooler network appliance to replace the PCs at first.... and later found out the high service contract fee.. ~_~

After reading many post here, I am considering to setup two VIA EDEN ITX to setup two ipcop for two connections. (as no dual wan support till now) They won't be cheap but at least less heat ,noise, and power. The best thing is free to get the security updates.

Jas> * alpha :

Your guess is wrong, there are many other similar products from other vendors that have ho hard drive.

This can be considered as a rule of thumb.

while that is simply wrong.

A lot of boxes run special software which is usually not free software.

One can build filtering devices using free software and there is nothing wrong with that as long as you keep in mind that quite a lot of code will be installed. The proprietary systems are in general a lot smaller than those built by oneself. On the other hand one has to rely totally on the vendor of such a box.

Wolfgang

Mike, you've got to be kidding. Firewall Appliances are always upgradable, at least every unit we've installed over the years has been updatable. When it comes to installations where the users don't have dedicated IT Staff or where the Staff is useless on firewalls, an appliance is the perfect solution, and an appliance is almost always more reliable than a server running a firewall application. I'll give you that the servers running things like CheckPoint offer many more network connection options than appliances.

Mike, you need to get out more - most firewall appliances on the market today don't come with "Hard Drives". WatchGuard, Netscreen, Sonic, Pix, etc... they are all flash memory based and don't require any moving parts, except the cooling fans.

The small ones you mean? There's nothing unique about them, apart from the cisco software (which may or may not be a good thing). The more enterprise-ish of the family are even more of a real pc than some of the home desktop-PCs I've seen on sale.

This should make for interesting reading if you haven't seen it already: