Full Disclosure mailing list archives
Re: PIX vs CheckPoint
From: David T Hollis <dhollis () davehollis com>
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 2004 16:16:16 -0400
On Tue, 2004-06-29 at 13:24 -0500, Darkslaker wrote:
i am studying for the CCSA and my Friend for CSPFA in the interchange of ideas we did not find differences significant; maybe two ; PIX run in OS for CISCO and CheckPoint in many platforms; and checkPoit have more products. My question is PIX or Checkpoint what is better and why.
"Better" would really be relative here. I've used both quite a bit and my personal preference is for PIX. The reasons being: 1) Cost, 2) Simplicity, 3) reliability. Checkpoint throws more stuff in the box, but you may never use a large portion of that stuff. I've also found that each version of Checkpoint (and we aren't talking major version like 1.0 vs 2.0, but 4.1 FP3 vs 4.1 FP4) seems to introduce all kinds of new quirks and quibbles that make things quite a pain to deal with. I've never used the PIX gui for anything, I understand recent versions are better, but I prefer command line myself. The Checkpoint GUI is ok, nothing to write home about, but it is quite functional. VPN setup with Checkpoint is quite easy (especially if you tried to do IPSEC in other arenas). Failover with PIX is tremendously simpler and Just Works (tm) compared with Checkpoint. I much prefer the straight text config which I can keep in a CVS repo and do diffs on the configs over periods of time to see what has changed. Has proven useful in employee termination scenarios as well. In the end, both are viable solutions for a firewall. If you already have an investment in Checkpoint stuff, it is the obvious choice. If you are a big Cisco shop, PIX will fit in quite easily (it's OS isn't IOS, but it's not really that far off). If you do go with Checkpoint, do the world a favor and don't run it on a Windows box. Run it on Linux or Solaris or buy a Nokia IPxxx to run it on. -- David T Hollis <dhollis () davehollis com> _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.netsys.com/full-disclosure-charter.html
Current thread:
- PIX vs CheckPoint Darkslaker (Jun 29)
- Re: PIX vs CheckPoint David T Hollis (Jun 29)
- Re: PIX vs CheckPoint John Kinsella (Jun 29)
- Re: PIX vs CheckPoint Laurent LEVIER (Jun 29)
- Re: PIX vs CheckPoint Cyril Guibourg (Jun 30)
- Re: PIX vs CheckPoint Jaroslaw Sajko (Jun 30)
- Re: PIX vs CheckPoint Laurent LEVIER (Jun 30)
- Re: PIX vs CheckPoint Cyril Guibourg (Jun 30)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- RE: PIX vs CheckPoint James Patterson Wicks (Jun 29)
- RE: PIX vs CheckPoint Eric Paynter (Jun 29)
- RE: PIX vs CheckPoint Gary E. Miller (Jun 29)
- Re: PIX vs CheckPoint John Kinsella (Jun 29)
- Re: PIX vs CheckPoint Eric Paynter (Jun 29)
- RE: PIX vs CheckPoint Eric Paynter (Jun 29)