Has anyone installed Symantec Enterprise Firewall?

[ljCharlie]

I'm looking into purchasing Symantec Enterprise Firewall for our organization. However, I'm not sure if it's going to work in our topology. I read a few documents and it said Symantec Enterprise Firewall requires to be installed on its own machine and nothing else should be installed in it. Symantec Enterprise Firewall also requires that this machine should have at least two NICs. This is how far I got with Symantec Enterprise Firewall. My question is, if the machine that Symantec Enterprise Firewall is installed is the gateway to the Internet then that means every client computers must be behind this machine, correct? So if I have more than one client computer than that means I need a switch behind the machine that Symantec Enterprise Firewall is installed to, right?

ljCharlie

 

[rn4it]

I haven't read up on this app, but it sounds like it's attempting to compete with Cisco Pix, Netscreen, Check point etc. If so, you would have one NIC leading out of your network(ie. internet) and 1 NIC leading into your LAN. The default gateway for your network would be the LAN interface. So all traffic would need to pass through this interface to get out to the internet. Therefore, the server that this is installed on would need to be very secure.

 

[johnnyBravo1]

I've actually been using SEF 7.0 and just upgraded to 8.0. It has been doing a very good job and i am pleased with it. It is an application/proxy based firewall. A connection made to a port on a proxy type firewall is 1st established and then the firewall makes a determination, based on filters, tunnels, rules and other criteria, whether to allow the traffic to pass the firewall or not. Connections are not passed as such, instead connections are proxied. The primary distinction between these two methods is that the proxy type firewall creates a new connection from the other interface rather than allowing a connection to pass. While this method is a little higher in overhead, it is infinitely more secure.

 

[ljCharlie]

Many thanks for the help. Will using the SEF 8.0 make workstation that are outside the firewall slower when accessing resources behind the SEF server?

ljCharlie