I began running Smoothwall, a linux-distro firewall, but the noise of a machine on was a pain. I moved to a Netgear wireless router, with in-built firewall.
If shopping again nowadays I would be very tempted by the Apple, wireless router firewall print-server, Airport. The inclusion of a print-server is a nice addition and wrapping all the features up in 1 box is worth the extra cost. On Fri, 4 Jul 2003, Bryan Forrest wrote: > If you are running OS X, you can turn on your built in firewall in the > Sharing System Preference. That's probably a good idea for most people > with an "always on" connection. If you feel you need something a little > beefier, routers with built in firewall support start at around $80. > But they do go up rather rapidly from there. You want to find a router > with Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI). This means the router inspects > every packet coming in and makes sure it was really requested by the > host computer(s). This prevents such attacks as denial-of-service > (DoS), ping-of-death, syn floods, and others. > > The least expensive router I've seen with SPI is the SMC7004FW. > Outpost.com has it for about $85. > (http://www.outpost.com/product/3340902/) It has a 4-port 10/100 > switch, provides SPI, and has VPN, or Virtual Private Network, support > for both PPTP (Point-to-point Tunneling Protocol) and IPSec (IP > Secure). PPTP is primarily used by Microsoft, while IPSec is the > standard used by Cisco and many others. I have not used this particular > model, but SMC has been around quite a while and I've had no complaints > with their hardware in the past. > > Hope this helps! > > Bryan C. Forrest > Macintosh Specialist > LifeNet > http://www.lifenet.org > > > On Friday, July 4, 2003, at 8:38 AM, George H. Yankey wrote: > > > > > Consumer reports has recommended that firewall should be installed if > > you are using broadband. How do I go about doing this ? Suggestions > > would be appreciated? > > > > George Yankey > > > > > > > > | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will > > | be July 22. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. > > | This list's page is <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup>. > > > > > > > > | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will > | be July 22. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. > | This list's page is <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup>. > | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will | be July 22. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. | This list's page is <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup>.
