Firewall Appliances

We have already discussed lots about the Firewall , lets discuss what are Firewall Appliances .Small hardware appliances (devices that are separate from your computer) that you can connect and configure are available on the market, although they're not as popular with home users as software products are. Appliances enable remote management of small remote offices or home offices and are used to protect several computers. Setting up hardware appliances is easier than setting up software products, but hardware appliances tend to be more costly. As for feature sets, these generally tend to be similar to software firewalls. Although we will not go into any great detail about these more expensive hardware appliances, you should keep them in mind after you have learned a bit more about the capabilities of firewalls. Several hardware firewalls include the following:

Watchguard SOHO— The small office/home office (SOHO) uses stateful inspection and NAT. One feature, LiveSecurity, is a subscription that provides software updates, technical support, and some training. This makes for a painless process in updating the features of the firewall. The SOHO also has a remote management feature and is frequently used in corporate environments to connect small home offices to the central corporate office, forming a virtual private network (VPN).

D-Link Systems DI-704— The DI-704 comes with a built-in hub or switch. This cuts down on the cost of buying a hub or switch to set up your internal network. It is not a robust appliance like the SOHO and has no VPN capability, Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service (RADIUS) capability, or encrypted remote management.

SonicWall SOHO2— The SOHO2 is on the expensive side of small appliances, retailing for about $495 for a 10-user model. It includes NAT, Web proxy, antivirus protection, multiple user IDs, RADIUS, DHCP server and client services, Web-content filtering, VPN, an intrusion detection mechanism, digital certificate authentication, centralized policy management, and customizable firewall protection.

Linksy's BEFSR11— This model, similar to the DI-704, is cheaper than a SOHO2, but it does not have VPN capability, support for centralized policy management, built-in antivirus or Web-content filtering support, or Java and cookie filtering capabilities. It uses packet filtering to protect the system, and it has an easy-to-understand user interface.

SNAPgear PRO— SNAPgear focuses on providing PPTP and IPsec VPN capabilities. Its price competes with the SOHO2 and the Watchguard SOHO. It has a second serial port that can be used to simultaneously support a dial-up/ISDN WAN and dial-in RAS connection and supports RADIUS/TACACS+ authentication and encryption. This is a robust Linux-based firewall.

Appliances do not really fit the needs of consumers in many cases. Remote management, VPN, and authentication to RADIUS servers is not really high on the priority list for home users.