Which home user router has a decent firewall inside it?

That's a good question. I recently bought the very affordable Netgear WGR614. It offers SPI (stateful packet inspection), an option to disable response to "ping" from the internet, and the ability to turn off the wireless radio when not needed. That's better then I was using previously, but it's probably still pretty lightweight. What is your budget?

In the home budget range, the Linksys WRT54GL (just turn off the wireless radio) or about any other Broadcom based device with sufficient memory paired with the free dd-wrt firmware can create a rather complex firewall of your choosing when paired with third party firmware.

(Yes, pedants, a Cisco PIX, a Juniper, Netscreen, or a Nokia IPSO based firewall would be better if price, noise, size and power consumption were no object. )

Best Regards,

Any idea how you can tell this particular model from the other non-Linus one? I've been looking at the package and can't see this info. John Jones, Detroit

The L in the model number.

WRT54G vs WRT54GL.

The WRT54GL is what you want to run third party firmware without limitations.

Up to $100.00 but preferably less. :)

OK, thanks. That one is within my budget. It says Linux version, I assume that still means it is fine to use with Vista and XP too.

Yeah.

The "Linux" aspect refers to the actual router itself internally running a linux kernel. The dd-wrt firmware actually implements an linux system as well.

What you need the firewall for? Many consumer router firewalls mainly protect the router itself and only have very few options to actually filter traffic from and to the LAN. The main protection of the LAN is usually due to NAT and for that you usually can only turn it on and off and set port forwardings into your LAN in various forms (forwarding, triggering, DMZ, etc.)

Gerald

OK, good, thanks. I run Linux too but just wanted to make sure it won't cause issues for Vista. I do know some routers cause issues with Xbox360 though so hope this one is ok in that regard.

So I don't have to use a software firewall too.

"Software firewall" is a very broad term. Many functions can be implemented in a software firewall.

Which functions of your software firewall do you think you need? Which functions must be available in the router firewall?

Gerald

Then none of the stores I use are carrying the Linux model :( John Jones, Detroit

ZyXEL ZyWALL 2 will do the job!

Newegg.com has them in stock.

Just to make it fully clear:

WRT54G and WRT54GL run Linux inside.

The WRT54GL uses the hardware platform of the WRT54G v1,v2,v3,v4 hardware versions. The WRT54G v5 and later has less memory and uses a different, incompatible platform.

The WRT54GL ist the continuation of the old WRT54G hardware versions.

The limited memory in the later WRT54G causes all kinds of problems which Linksys is not able fully fix so far.

The WRT54Gv1-v4 and the WRT54GL are compatible and you can easily install third party firmware like dd-wrt on it.

The WRT54Gv5-v8 have limited support for 3rd party firmware except for the v7 which does not support it at all because it uses a different chipset.

All routers work with Windows, Mac, and Linux unless there is a firmware bug which prevents it.

Gerald

Unfortunately, I don't believe that's accurate.

The OS since v5 of the WRT54G is VxWorks, which is an embedded RTOS by Wind River, and it is decidedly not Linux.

Linksys made this switch because with their volumes, switching to the tighter, more efficient VxWorks allowed them to cut their memory needs in half, and the parts cost savings more than made up for the licensing cost for the promprietary VxWorks operating system.

All true.

While we're talking about it some reference links might be worthwhile:

Best Regards,

Packet inspection and discarding unsolicited packets. That's what a firewall is for. Why are you asking me stupid questions?

I stand corrected. So far I thought VxWorks was Linux based because you can run dd-wrt on the vxworks routers. I didn't check further.

But I was wrong. VxWorks ist not based on Linux.

Thanks,

Gerald

Because that is not what the firewall of an average consumer brand router does. Not for your LAN. The NAT translation on the router will discard "unsolicited" packets. NAT will inspect any packets if at all.

You'll see the difference in the moment you turn off NAT (i.e. you use public IP addresses in your LAN) and keep the firewall active. In that moment nothing will be filtered between the internet and your LAN simply because by default the firewall on the router protects the router itself but not your LAN.

Gerald