Re: Firewall -- MIDRANGE-L

a comment on both Jerome & MacWheel99's post - I believe that in firewalls,
you mostly get what you pay for. Zone Alarm and similar are popular for home
pc's, and are typical of lots of downloadable net software. Limited
function. Limited reliability.My ZoneAlarm Pro version locks up with Client
Access every 3 or 4th attempt to sign in. CA is not locked. ZoneAlarm is.
The IPChains is similar. My current client is throwing it out because it
lacks required function. And they have already spent more in lost user
productivity, tech time, etc than buying a better firewall the first time.
As to what firewall is the best? - it depends.. what are you protecting? how
much time/money is it worth to protect?
How do your users getting the functionality they need, and at the same time
your protecting the corp network?
The www.icsa.net is the best resource for learning about various firewalls.
Also - since I've seen several people do this, don't run a firewall on *pos*
hardware or OS. When the firewall is down, so is your network.
There is nothing AS400 specific about a firewall. It's all standard tcp.
imho - jim

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jerome Draper" <jdraper@wco.com>
To: <MIDRANGE-L@midrange.com>
Sent: Friday, December 08, 2000 8:15 PM
Subject: Re: Firewall


> I setup a Ascend Lucent Superpipe 155 Router that has a firewall built in
> as well as VPN (not sure which it supports tho).  This is quite a box as
it
> has:
>
> FIREWALL
> DSU/CSU
> ISNN BRI1 and BRI2
> T1
> VPN
>
> The vt100 telnet config is kinda klunky/techy.  A nice feature of this
> $1200-$1600 unit is that you can tfpt the configuration to a PC where it
> looks like a .ini file.  If the router gets trashed you can tftp the
> config.txt back to the router and be in business instantly (nice doc
> feature as well).
>
> The firewall has a very nich windows gui interface that allows you to
> choose from an extensive list of options.  Ultimately it will save the
> firewall config in a .txt file which is then, upon command tftped to the
> router.  Once again the firewall config sits in a file on a PC for doc
> purposes.
>
> My Flowpoint DSL router (Netopia is same) has both firewall and VPN built
> in and cost me $250.  I won't be using the firewall as I have a Linux box
> with 2 ethernet cards running IPCHAINS for the firewall.  My internal
> network is on one card and hub at the 192.168 addrs while the other card
is
> on the router with legal internet addresses.
>
> My questions:
>
> Why do people have units that cost $3000 to $5000?
> Why buy a second firewall only unit when it's already in the router?
> Why not implement the Linux solution to cover all the bases?
>
> Jerry
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