[geeks] Firewalls...

[Will Mc Donald]

Firewall-1 on x86/linux. Good idea? Bad idea? Discuss.

Our old sparc based firewalls are beginning to creak a bit, personally I'd
like to replace them with bigger, better sparcs but as is always the way our
budget probably won't stretch to much.

For the price we'd pay for a couple of 220Rs, 250s or 280R's kitted out
adequate RAM and enough NICs to suit the site we could probably buy decent
PC based servers for 1/10th the price, maybe a little more but not far off.

By my estimation a suitable Sun box looks like it'll probably cost around
20 - 25k, E280R with 1 x 750 MHz processor, 1 Gig RAM, 2 x 36 Gig disk, 2
QFE and 2 gig eithernet cards.

PC based solution with a couple of Quad Ethernet cards, Gig ethernet cards,
Ultra 160 SCSI and a gig or two of RAM could probably be build for about 3k
using quality components throughout.

So is it worth it? Does anyone know how stable the latest FW-1 is on linux?

Will.