nanog mailing list archives
ACLs vs. full firewalls
From: Michael Helmeste <mhelmest () uvic ca>
Date: Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:05:31 -0700
Hi all, One of the duties of my current place of employ is reorganizing the network. We have a few Catalyst 6500 series L3 switches, but currently do all packet filtering (and some routing) using a software based firewall. Don't ask me, I didn't design it :) Current security requirements are only based on TCP and non-stateful UDP src/dst net/port filtering, and so my suggestion was to use ACLs applied on the routed interface of each VLAN. There was some talk of using another software based firewall or a Cisco FWSM card to filter traffic at the border, mostly for management concerns. We expect full 1 gig traffic levels today, and 10 gig traffic levels in the future. I view ACLs as being a cheap, easy to administrate solution that scales with upgrades to new interface line speeds, where a full stateful firewall isn't necessary. However, I wanted to get other opinions of what packet filtering solutions people use in the border and in the core, and why. What's out there, and why do you guys use it? How do you feel about the scalability, performance, security, and manageability of your solution? What kind of traffic levels do you put through it?
Current thread:
- ACLs vs. full firewalls Michael Helmeste (Apr 07)
- Re: ACLs vs. full firewalls Justin M. Streiner (Apr 07)
- Re: ACLs vs. full firewalls Eric Gauthier (Apr 07)
- Re: ACLs vs. full firewalls Michael Helmeste (Apr 07)
- Re: ACLs vs. full firewalls Matthew Petach (Apr 07)
- Re: ACLs vs. full firewalls Mark Smith (Apr 07)
- Re: ACLs vs. full firewalls Karl Auer (Apr 07)
- Re: ACLs vs. full firewalls Nathan Ward (Apr 07)
- Re: ACLs vs. full firewalls Karl Auer (Apr 07)
- Re: ACLs vs. full firewalls Steven M. Bellovin (Apr 07)
- Re: ACLs vs. full firewalls Karl Auer (Apr 07)
- Re: ACLs vs. full firewalls Ravi Pina (Apr 15)