Which Firewall do you use?

[humbletech99]

I am comparing firewalls. We currently use smoothwall but I am not that impressed with it. I wonder if an appliance solution would be better and would like to get some feedback from my fellow techies...

What firewall do you use and why?

If I implement another smoothwall then I have to buy a new machine for it by which time I may as well just buy an appliance. I wouldn't mind seeing the back of smoothwall, but if I am to consider another solution it must interoperate with smoothwall in order keep vpns between sites etc...


All feedback welcome.

[Redman]

I am using Iptables (firewall) Firestarter (graphical configurator) at the moment.

[humbletech99]

I'm really looking at corporate border gateway firewalls...

[Roxoff]

As you probably know, I use Smoothwall too - and I've had no problems with it; it's done everything I've asked of it. I suspect that as you're in a corporate environment you're finding that your needs are stretching beyond what a basic appliance firewall can do?

Since I first installed Smoothwall, there have been many more 'firewall' distros put together. Here's the search I did on distrowatch.

All I can say on the matter is that, as it's a corporate environment, then they'll probably want a supported firewall package - these are very very expensive (well, they were last time I looked at anything like this, maybe four years ago). They're significantly more than the price of a second hand computer on ebay, which is all you need for a firewall appliance.

You probably wont like this kind of recommendation, but I suggest you get the company to buy a small, cheap computer (or even get a machine upgraded for a member of staff and use their old PC) and try out a few of these firewall distros before you make any decisions.