RE: Firewall recommendations?

["John Tolmachoff" <sflist-secbasic () reliance net>]

While I see people recommend NetScreen, I can not based on my experience
with their techs, which includes level 2 techs.

While researching options for a firewall for a client, none of the techs at
NetScreen that I talked to could answer a basic question: Does NetScreen
firewall do stateful packet inspection? 5 different techs, including a
senior lead tech, could not answer yes or no. (The fact that it does is not
the point here, the knowledge by their techs is.)

We have 9 Sonicwalls installed and am very happy with them. (Clients and
in-house.)

The comment about ISA server in a environment where security is at most, I
would recommend a primary firewall, such as a Sonicwall, as the first line
of defense, (with a DMZ behind that in Normal Mode,) then ISA server between
the DMZ and the Internal LAN.

ISA is an excellent product for integrating with a LAN. However, as someone
else said, when it comes to security, there is on one end-all product.

John Tolmachoff MCSE, CSSA
IT Manager, Network Engineer
RelianceSoft, Inc.
Fullerton, CA  92835
www.reliancesoft.com