In the final entry of a three-part series of firewall product reviews, Pawel Leszek looks at dedicated appliance firewalls based on Linux. "Fire and forget" is the main idea behind hardware firewall appliances like WatchGuard's Firebox II, the Raptor Firewall from . . .
In the final entry of a three-part series of firewall product reviews, Pawel Leszek looks at dedicated appliance firewalls based on Linux. "Fire and forget" is the main idea behind hardware firewall appliances like WatchGuard's Firebox II, the Raptor Firewall from Cobalt and Axent, the Phoenix Adaptive Firewall from Progressive Systems, and the T.Rex firewall appliance from Freemont Avenue Software.

The idea is simple -- let's get some custom hardware and software, put them into one easy-to-install "black box" and write some software to manage the beast. The end user doesn't need to know what OS is inside, or how to install and configure the software. This approach can be useful -- you can install this kind of firewall in minutes and not worry about playing with installation, reading boring manuals, and so on. The hardware is customized for the software and the software is polished for the hardware. The only problem is that you don't really know how it works -- but intruders probably don't, either.

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