network infrastructure advice

[gwu]

Our current setup has my perimeter firewall as the router of all of our VLANS. I am assuming it is more efficient to use an 1841 router between the switch and firewall. This way, the firewall does not have to deal with routing of internal vlans. I am also assuming I would use access lists on the 1841 router to determine who has access to what VLANs. Am I correct in my assumptions? Which way is better? Is there a better way?

Secondly , we currently have vpn users from the internet terminating at the firewall to get into our network. In the new setup how would the firewall tell the router which vpn users belong to which vlans?

thanks

--------current setup-------------

internet
|
|
checkpoint firewall
|
|
layer 2 cisco switch
|
|
VLANS


--------new setup-------------

internet
|
|
checkpoint firewall
|
|
1841 cisco router
|
|
layer 2 cisco switch
|
|
VLANS

 

[gwu]

anyone?

 

[PalmTest]

Well then I'll give it a shot.....

You are right about getting the Routing load off the Firewall and let Routing be done by the Cisco router.
But if the Firewall is not running out of resources, what is your main reason to do the routing by a Cisco?

In your second line you don't know how to place users in a VLAN. I assume that the Firewall did the VLAN management?
Vlan tagging can still be done by the Firewall, so the Router can handle the VLan routing.
It is possible to use ACL's to place users in the VLAN's but then you have to maintain this list with every change.