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Router, firewall, both, confusion...

Which piece of the puzzle handles NAT / port redirection? I'm thinking either, but my opinion is based on very limited experience with GTA firewalls such as the old RoBox and GnatBox-Pro.

My real problem is I need a new firewall. My RoBox died and they want too much to fix it. The GnatBox-Pro is obsolete and I need some newer features.

There is a Cisco T1 router belongs to the ISP with a single net connection to me. That connection is going to the old GnatBox-Pro.

I have a block of 8 IP addresses from the ISP which let's me use 5 of them. I have domains and web sites on each of the 5. All incoming SMTP and POP3 traffic to go to one internal IP address to either an exchange server or a standalone mail server (currently on the private network). All the port 80 stuff currently goes to a different IP on a machine in the DMZ (semi-private). The port 80's are remapped to ports 1080, 2080, 3080, etc on a single web server box.

I am looking at either a new GB-200 or a Cisco 871 to replace the GnatBox-Pro. The main plus for the GB-200 is I know it will do what I want. The question I have is, is what I described generally true of router/firewall products or is it unique to the GBA products?

Scott

Reply to
Not Really Me
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Any/all of them.

Just keep in mind that a network firewall IS a router, in addition to having more rubust firewall capabilities. A router has a very limited set of firewall capabilities, but does have some. Usually, both can do NAT.

A firewall can usually handle the whole shebang, becuase it has high capability in all areas. A router can usually only handle routing/NAT and (somewhat) limited firewall functions.

-Frank

Reply to
Frank

Not every firewall is a router.

Yours, VB.

Reply to
Volker Birk

As I said, every network firewall is a router.

-Frank

Reply to
Frank

In article , Frank wrote: :> Not every firewall is a router.

:As I said, every network firewall is a router.

Only if you create a circular definition, that a device is not a "network firewall" unless it is a router.

There are several vendors (e.g., Cisco) who make Layer 2 Transparent Firewalls, which can sit inline and do layer 4 filtering, without "routing" the packets. These firewalls do -not- join multiple broadcast domains (the basic definition of a router): both sides of them are in the -same- broadcast domain, and the L2T firewalls pass the broadcast traffic between the two sides [in accordance with the filtering rules.]

Reply to
Walter Roberson

Not every network firewall is a router. There are bridging firewalls, for example.

Yours, VB.

Reply to
Volker Birk

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