1st firewall

[dball63]

I need to setup a firewall at a 5 user office. I have never set one up but I do understand most of the principles. That said, I am looking for a small hardware appliance that would protect them better than the router they currently use. VPN would also be nice for me to be able to gain access to do management. Easy to setup and maintain would be another thing I would want. Was hoping for some recommendations. So far I've looked a little at Netgear, LinkSYS, Sonicwall but not sure which performs best. I've heard good things about LinkSys and heard about many installs of sonicwall. I'm sure any of these would work fine but I was hoping some of you could share your thoughts and experiences.

David Ball

 

[ChicagoJim]

Of the three, I would go with the SonicWall.

I'd personally rule out the Netgear. In the low end models, VPN connections are software based and SLOW. And, I've had to pull an FVS318 out of service because it was buggy.

I've never used a LinkSys in a production environment. But, I use one for my home connection and haven't had any problems.

As I've mentioned above, software based VPN is much slower than hardware. Therefore, go with hardware based VPN if it's available in your price range.

 

[karmic]

what router are they currently using? and what's your price range...

Keep in mind that the lower end model of router/firewall offer inbound protection only, very few offer any outbound protection. That said, if you get a trojan on your network, it will get to the outside world.

If they can afford it, go with a little higher end like cisco. Be alot less problems in the long run.

~ K.I.S.S - Don't make it any more complex than it has to be ~

 

[dball63]

They are using Netgeat RT314. I'd like to keep the price down only because we just recently spent 7000.00 on other electronics and I know that even though this needs to be addressed, they will not want to pay for this. You know how hard it is to sell security to folks some times.

David Ball