Re: Hardware vs. Software firewall reliability

[Franck Veysset <franck.veysset () cnet francetelecom fr>]

It depends what you mean by "Hardware Firewall"...

Even products like Cisco Pix or "Lucent Managed Firewall" 
wich are supposed to be hardware, works on an Intel Pentium
processor... So it is more or less a dedicated PC, wich
runs a specific OS made for security and firewalling.
(without the need of hard drive)

Perhaps we can classified firewalls into 2 different categories
those wich run on a normal OS (Solaris, NT...) and those running
on a dedicated OS (like Inferno for LMF). 
When they use a specific OS, written specifically for a FW, they
usually don't need hard drive, but they are mostly running on Intel
or similar processors.

About failover cable, they become less usefull : there are no moving
pieces inside the fw, so the MTBF is much better. 
I know that it is possible to use a failover cable between 2 cisco Pix:
when the first pix die, the second pix start working. I think there
are similar failover systems for other "hardware" firewall.

hope this help

-Franck

Bill Stout wrote:
> I notice that more firewalls are of the hardware type.  It seems that over
> time the hardware firewalls have become more robust, and with the minimal
> configuration involved, lack of mechanical devices (disks) and underlying OS
> to fiddle with, seem to have higher MTBF ratings than software firewalls.
> Seems that many on the list have predicted the rise of the hardware firewall
> and 'death' of the software firewall.
>
> What is the current feel of hardware vs. software firewalls?
>
> My specific interest is in protecting Internet service bureaus, with a
> limited set of published applications.  Therefore outbound proxies are not
> as critical.
>
> BTW - Are there failover hardware firewalls available?
>
> Bill Stout
>
> Unresolved industry-wide date bugs:
> -- Incompatible Julian date formats and translation logic remain in 'Y2K
> ready' systems (enter 1/1/29 and 1/1/30 in Excel) MS=YYDDD, JDE=CYYDDD,
> Oracle=YYYYDDD, etc
> -- Think of the impact of dynamically changing OS date (Don't do this on a
> server).  Open DOS window in 'Windows', type 'date /t', double-click clock
> on taskbar, browse date (don't apply), type 'date /t' in DOS window, cancel
> 'date/time properties' to restore.

-- 

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 Franck Veysset, Internet/Intranet Security
 E-Mail : franck.veysset () francetelecom fr
 Phone +33 (0)1 45 29 55 08 , Fax  +33 (0)1 45 29 65 19