[geeks] Firewalls...

[Will Mc Donald]

Cheers for all the input everyone.

If we did go for a PC/liunx based solution I'd be inclined to go with a
Supermicro motherboard with a ServerWorks chipset. More PCI and memory
bandwidth than a usual PC, they do some nice 500 quid boards with onboard
SCSI 160 and a combo of 32/64bit / 33/66MHz PCI slots. Something like...

http://www.supermicro.co.uk/content/products/motherboards/rcc-hesl/370de6.ht
m

ISTR reading somewhere (anantech if memory serves) that ServerWorks chipsets
do some sort of cunning interleaving to increase memory bandwidth. I don't
know if they handle interupts any better, but we would obviously build and
test this in a non-live environment so if we do go for it and it doesn't
work out I'm sure I'll be able to find a use for the hardware. :)

As to the number of interfaces needed, we personally don't have a
particulary large network but we do connect lots of other networks together.
It's a weird topology but it's something inherited rather than designed and
there's not much we can do about it.

We shall see where we go, it's not really my final decision, I just have to
live with/support the bugger. :)

Will.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Will Mc Donald" <wmcdonald at orctel.co.uk>
To: <geeks at mrbill.net>
Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2001 1:51 PM
Subject: [geeks] Firewalls...


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