What firewall for a small network

There are a lot of options.

You haven't said much about what you want to do with it, but I would say look at something like a Netscreen SSG5 which will do a heck of a lot for the price.

AIUI the Netscreen 5xx range are still supported but the SSG range are the more current (and likely to be around/developed/supported in the future) range.

The likes of Fortinet, Cisco ASA and Checkpoint Edge appliances are also worth looking at - I've come to the conclusion that unless you want to do something quite specific these things are much of a muchness at the functional level and much of the decision comes down to things like support, ease of management etc.

Interesting that you mention SSG series. After I posted here I looked at SSG 140 and am now more inclined to go that route.

I will have a small network with only one 2003 server 64-bit Domain Controller with Active Directory and Exchange 2007. We also have VoIP.

From what I've read about SSG 140 it can be my router to the internet as well as route private IPs in the internal network.

Is SSG 140 an overkill for what I described above or should I go for SSG5?

I appreciate your input. John

First off I'll admit to knowing nothing about VOIP so I have no idea if there are likely to be issues with that and the SSG series.

I would suggest that for basic routing in and out of packets, and URL filtering that unless you have very heavy users or serious bandwidth to the outside world the SSG 5 will be more than sufficient, even allowing for the specifications being on the optimistic side.

Where it starts to bog down is when you enable things that require it to inspect traffic such as the Anti-Spam, Deep Inspection, and Antivirus options.

From what I can tell (we have an SSG 5) the 140 does exactly the same stuff, it can just handle more.