RE: Sonicwall or Watchguard

["Bill Jaeger" <wlj () interNook net>]

Andy,

Have you checked out the GNAT Box line of appliance firewalls from Global
Technology Associates?  See http://www.gta.com or http://www.gnatbox.com for
additional info.

About a year ago we were looking to purchase several reasonably priced
appliance firewalls for use in a hosted environment, and offerings from
neither SonicWall nor WatchGuard [0] met our requirements.  While looking
for a solution, we stumbled across the GNAT Box line of firewalls and were
rather (pleasantly) shocked by both the feature set and price point.

The base GNAT Box GB-1000 appliance firewall lists for $2750, and includes
four 10/100 Mbps network interfaces, stateful packet filtering, IPSec VPN,
very good logging via SYSLOG, NTP time synchronization, expansion slot for
another NIC (10/100/1000 or four port 10/100), HA expansion option, and a
slew of other features.  If it matters to you, the GNAT Box is also ICSA
certified.

The GB-1000 does have a few warts, however, that might be significant to
you:

        - No SNMP support for bandwidth or system monitoring and
          configuration, although SNMP traps are supported.

        - The HA option does not maintain state during fail over.

        - The device does not support any form of strong
          authentication (e.g., SecurID) for administrative sessions.

        - The Web-based administration console does not support SSL,
          although access can be tunneled over IPSec or disabled
          altogether.

Overall, we've been quite pleased with the GB-1000s that we've purchased,
and have no relationship with GTA other than as a satisfied customer.

Feel free to contact me if you've got questions.

-Bill


[0] The WatchGuard Firebox was a close fit for our needs save one critical
area -- logging.  At the time, and possibly still today, the Firebox would
only log to a proprietary Windows application and not via SYSLOG, SNMP
traps, or other standards-based mechanism.  This was a showstopper in our
all UNIX environment.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: firewall-wizards-admin () nfr com
> [mailto:firewall-wizards-admin () nfr com]On Behalf Of Andy Murrell
> Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2001 6:54 AM
> To: firewall-wizards () nfr com
> Subject: [fw-wiz] Sonicwall or Watchguard
>
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm looking for a firewall solution for one of my clients, I've been
> pointed towards both the Watchguard and Sonicwall products.  Both seem
> to fit the bill in function and price, but from what little I know I can
> see pro's and con's of both product ranges but I can't find any direct
> comparisons.  Just wondering if anyone could provide any further input
> on which direction I should go it?
>
> Thanks
>
> Andy Murrell
> andy.murrell () integra-networks co uk
> _______________________________________________
> firewall-wizards mailing list
> firewall-wizards () nfr com
> http://list.nfr.com/mailman/listinfo/firewall-wizards

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