Re: Firewall bake-off?

[Zachary Grafton <chaotic.chowder () gmail com>]

Jim,

With active-active load splitting, I would have to admit, I don't know.
I've never had to use an external load balancer, we did have 3000 users
on a network with 2 sidewinders, and we didn't notice an speed problems.
With the transition when one fails, you should run a heartbeat cable
between them, and you then configure how often the heartbeat is sent.
The transitions we had were pretty smooth. From what I remember, it
isn't limited to 2 firewalls.

The best thing about the sidewinder firewall in my opinion is the
manual. Out of all the firewalls I've ever used, it has by far the
nicest manual. It'll tell you how to configure anything you want to
know. I still have one, and I check and get you the answers to all your
questions when I get home.

One other thing I should mention is that they sell them as appliances
and I highly recommend going that way as the Sidewinder software can be
install on Dell 2650s, but the Dell sometimes uses different NIC vendors
and the sidewinder doesn't have the widest support for network devices,
especially anything Broadcom.

Hope that helps a little,

Zack

Jim MacLeod wrote:
> On 3/20/07, Zachary Grafton <chaotic.chowder () gmail com> wrote:
>   
> > Well, the greatest thing about the sidewinder is how easy it is to
> > configure things. It does have clustering and nice failover features,
> > which are in my opinion, extremely important. If you are worried about
> > performance with a Sidewinder, just buy another one and cluster them.
> >     
>
> Does it support active-active load splitting?  Or do you need an
> external load balancer for that?  How destructive is the transition
> when one fails?  How extensive is the state sync?  Will it scale to
> n+1, or is it limited to 2 firewalls?
>
> Thanks,
> -Jim
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>   

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