Firewall options- which way to go

[Leon Pholi <L.Pholi () secureinteractive com>]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hi,

I am looking at options for setting up a Linux firewall for our
company. Although I am a relative newbie to Linux, I'm not afraid to
get my 'hands dirty' with IPTables etc. 

I have a couple of questions and would appreciate all comments.

1) Is it better to use a purpose built distribution such as
Smoothwall, IPCop or firewall specific ones from Redhat, Mandrake,
SuSE etc, or, would it be better to use a standard distro & built it
from scratch (bearing in mind I haven't yet recompiled a kernel but
I'm willing to give that a go too)? 

2) If building from scratch, kernel version 2.4 supports both
ipchains & iptables (newer)- does anyone have a strong view on using
one over the other?
If using a purpose built one, does anyone have any experienced based
preferences?

3) Other than just suggesting to do a google search, are there any
resources (a simple step by step howto would be good) you would
recommend for the suggested approach?

All help greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Leon

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGP 7.0.4

iQA/AwUBPaoQ+23X5duwk+XvEQKyUQCfcI+YuA2CoEgTKPdMkacPHhc0MWQAoKid
reavCfqXEnT7pygVQ+8nO9P4
=kL3I
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----