Re: Firewall in AS400

[James Rich <james@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 11 Apr 2002, Dr Syd Nicholson wrote:

> Might be OK in a large shop, but small shops can't afford it. Besides
> who would spend over $70,000 on an iSeries to run Linux when the exactly
> the same benefit can be achieved with a PC costing less then $3,000. Its
> only a firewall, doesn't need a vast amount of expensive hardware, just
> a fast processor amd plenty of memory.

A fast processor and plenty of memory for firewalling?  Not true.  You can
run a firewall that can handle the bandwidth of 10 base-T ethernet on a
486 with 16M memory running linux.  Why would anyone spend money to put it
on their iSeries, especially small shops?

I think you are suggesting to just use the inexpensive linux solution on a
separate box.  This is clearly the less expensive solution, even less than
if OS/400 had a firewall since the software cost to the buyer would be
higher than the cost of linux on its own machine.

James Rich
james@eaerich.com