Using a Firewall as a router?

[melbert2002]

Hello all,
Got a quick question for you all. I am in the middle of redesigning our current web farm. Its pretty small, 3 webservers, 1 FTP server, and a staging server. Looking at replacing the checkpoint fw with a netscreen 208. Now here is the weird thing (at least for me), we are currently having our fw route all traffic to either our web servers, ftp or staging and performing fw duties.

I have always thought that you should have a router do the routing then go to a firewall. It is currently working, but my question is it advisable to have the firewall do everything?

Thanks

Mel

 

[smah]

It's very common for these two functions (firewall & router) to be integrated into 1 device. I didn't check the specs of your devices, but I'm sure that you essentially have both functions in 1 box.

 

[melbert2002]

Thanks for the info

Yes, the FW will do both functions. I was just wondering, cause Ive never seen it done before. Cool, just looking for opinions.

Mel