Hardware firewall?

[Santilli]

Hi
I haven't had much luck with software firewalls, except, so far, XP.

I was wondering how one would go about setting up a hardware firewall?

My current setup is a fixed IEP ADSL, into an Alcatel modem, and then to a
router. From the router, we go to a nice switch, and then to any number of computers connected.

Thanks

Greg

 

[Handruin]

If you have some old computer hardware sitting around, you may want to consider trying smoothwall. Several of the guys here use it with good results. Something like a 486 will be enough to drive it.

It's not exactly a "hardware" firewall, but it is an all-in-one software driven solution which utilizes your hardware 100% to make a router/firewall. You would need two nic's inside this computer, one going to the cable/internet connection, and the other connecting to you public router.

You mentioned having a router, is it not also a NAT/Firewall device, or is it just a router? If smoothwall is too complicated for what you need, you could try any of the consumer routers (linksys, netgear, etc) which offer a statefull packet inspection (SPI) based firewall. That should give you the same result, but may not be as feature-rich as smoothwall.