RE: suggestions on a good firewall

["Chris Berry" <compjma () hotmail com>]

> From: silvia ghezzi <ghezzi_silvia () yahoo de>
> Talking about firewalls, I have experience only with
> Gauntlet, and I was not really happy with it.
> It was too much complicated to understand and to be
> used and here was a real lack of support.
> Now I have been using PIX for a couple of months, and
> I am happy.
>
> But I still had to fight with my management (which is
> not really IT oriented). Since we have a full Windows
> 2000 environment with Windows experienced people, they
> made pressure to have MS ISA server as a firewall.
> Right now I could got PIX for our remote office, but
> they are still thinking to go for ISa for oher future
> remote offices.
>
> I have only a little experience on ISA, so I cannot
> judge. but I still consider it not as a firewall but
> as a HTTP proxy.
>
> Is there someone more into it than me, that can tell
> me about the advantags and/or disadvantages of having
> ISA as a firewall?

I'm using ISA here, and it's not bad as long as you use ONLY microsoft 
products.  I chose it originally because when I started here MS was all I 
knew, now that I'm picking up Linux knowledge as well, I highly recommend 
IPCOP instead (plus its free, and you know how much manager love that word). 
 IPCOP has firewall/proxy/ids/ssh etc. all built in, and it's ridiculously 
easy to set up.  I use it for our remote office and I never have to do 
anything with it, just install and forget (well, check for patches once in a 
while, but not very often)  The only real advantage I can see to ISA is 
tight Active Directory integration.

Chris Berry
compjma () hotmail com
Systems Administrator
JM Associates

"All I want is a few minutes alone with the source code for the universe and 
a quick recompile."

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