Upgrading Home Firewall

I have a Netgear FR114 box and am thinking that my needs are outgrowing it for our home network. We have 7 machines...2 of them are used by our kids. I also do a great deal of downloading from newsgroups (on a dedicated machine) as well as adult surfing. I am on a DSL connection.

Questions...

1) Will having a box that does virus checking slow down my downloading since it is looking at all traffic?

2) How up to the task are the virus packages in Netscreen/Sonic Wall etc. boxes? Can they be set up to auto-update?

3) Which is least likely to have holes that can be exploited?

4) Can one filter content to certain IPs (multiple machines)?

BTW...I am not adverse to running another machine for this task. Sadly, the Dell I have laying around does not seem to be Linux friendly as I have tried to install 3 distributions and have had no luck. I am pretty Linux naive....is this too much of a task to keep up to date on a Linux box without my intervention.. (automatically)?

Thanks!

Reply to
ringo
Loading thread data ...

Cabling-Design.com Forums website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.