Firewall Wizards mailing list archives
Re: Hardware vs. Software firewall reliability
From: "Josh Robb" <joshuar () fujitsu co nz>
Date: Thu, 9 Sep 1999 10:41:19 +1200
The Nokia Firewall boxen hare a hardware solution running (although you never see it) hardened FreeBSD and checkpoint Firewall-1 4.0. You simply download a system image to them and they boot. They come with load balancing and failover out of the box and are really easy to setup. They have lots of cool options like plugging frame cards straight into the chassis so you don't need a router. The have load tested them up to 28,000 concurrent connections. They are pretty cool boxes and because the OS is invisible you never have problems of customers install other software like with NT based FW's. (eg quake servers, Remotely Possible). This make me feel much better about putting them into customer sites. Josh ----- Original Message ----- From: Bill Stout <Bill.Stout () AristaSoft com> To: <firewall-wizards () nfr net> Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 1999 11:01 AM Subject: Hardware vs. Software firewall reliability
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.
Current thread:
- Hardware vs. Software firewall reliability Bill Stout (Sep 07)
- Re: Hardware vs. Software firewall reliability Franck Veysset (Sep 08)
- RE: Hardware vs. Software firewall reliability Joe Ippolito (Sep 10)
- RE: Hardware vs. Software firewall reliability Jules Veloria (Sep 11)
- RE: Hardware vs. Software firewall reliability Aaron D. Turner (Sep 11)
- RE: Hardware vs. Software firewall reliability Joe Ippolito (Sep 10)
- Re: Hardware vs. Software firewall reliability Bill Pennington (Sep 08)
- Re: Hardware vs. Software firewall reliability Christopher C. Petro (Sep 18)
- Re: Hardware vs. Software firewall reliability David Klann (Sep 08)
- Re: Hardware vs. Software firewall reliability Josh Robb (Sep 08)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- Re: Hardware vs. Software firewall reliability Ryan Russell (Sep 08)
- Re: Hardware vs. Software firewall reliability Marcus J. Ranum (Sep 08)
- RE: Hardware vs. Software firewall reliability Lart (Sep 09)
- RE: Hardware vs. Software firewall reliability Lart (Sep 11)
- RE: Hardware vs. Software firewall reliability Lart (Sep 09)
- Re: Hardware vs. Software firewall reliability Vin McLellan (Sep 09)
- RE: Hardware vs. Software firewall reliability Bill Stout (Sep 09)
- RE: Hardware vs. Software firewall reliability Ryan Russell (Sep 12)
- Tripwire like perl program Siglite (Sep 14)
- RE: Hardware vs. Software firewall reliability dwelch (Sep 14)
- RE: Hardware vs. Software firewall reliability Joe Ippolito (Sep 14)
(Thread continues...)
- Re: Hardware vs. Software firewall reliability Franck Veysset (Sep 08)