Load balancer in lieu of firewall...

[John Nanas <JohnN () review com>]

Greets to all-

Pardon the simple question, but I've been bombarded by marketing material
and now have little sense left in me to make a rational decision.

We've been investigating load balancers for a new website that we're going
to launch.  The site has to be reasonably secure, which is why we've
allocated budget for a firewall as well as a load balancer.  The makers of
the BigIP, F5 Labs, assure us that the packet filtering features of their
load balancer are sufficient, and that we don't need a firewall.

I need to make a case of this, in simple terms, to my superiors.  Granted
that the device does packet filtering, it offers a good deal of security.
It does not have a telnet interface, and all configuration takes place using
SSL.

Does anyone have a suggestion as to why this wouldn't work?

Thanks,
John Nanas