Re: Firewall

On Tue, 5 Dec 2000, Al Barsa, Jr. wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Being a loyal AS/400 customer and user, I bought the crock of @#$% that our 
> AS/400 firewall was the best, and invested in it.  Shame on me.  So now I 
> have to replace it.  So here's a few questions:
> 
> 1) What Firewall product do you use?

FreeBSD w/the ipfw firewall that it comes with.

> 2) How much did it cost?

Nothing.  The operating system is available for free.  We had an old 486 
that was too slow to run Win 95 which we turned into a
firewall/gateway/dns server instead of throwing it away.   

> 3) How satisfied are you with it?

100% satisfied.  This machine has actually been more reliable than our
AS/400, and has cost me absolutely nothing.

> 4) How difficult was it to configure?

If you're already familiar with FreeBSD (or at least SOME version of UNIX)
IPFW's syntax takes about 10 minutes to learn.  

If you're not familiar, then you're installing a new OS from scratch,
learning how to use it, etc.   Much like giving someone an AS/400, the
OS/400 cd-rom and saying "hey new guy, set this up..."  there's going to
be a learning curve.  :)  In that case, it'd probably take a few hours.


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