Hardware firewall question



  • Can someone explain why certain hardware firewalls are, say, sometimes around $10K and others are less than $1K? For example here in the Dell link below, what exactly are you getting for the difference in price: 

    http://search.dell.com/results.aspx?s=gen&c=us&l=en&cs=&k=firewall+appliance&cat=all&ref=ac

    TIA



  •  It's all related to the feature sets, throughput & number of simultaneous connections they support.  For example if you compare the WatchGuard® Firebox® X5500e for $6,700 to the WatchGuard® Firebox X55e for $1,000;  the X5500e support a boatload more connections including VPN and IPSEC tunnels.  The X5500e also supports a lot more routing protocols making it much more like a router than your smaller firewalls. So it can be used to setup some fairly complicated subnets and DMZs where traffic can be routed with fine grained control.

    I guess the real question is what are you looking to do and what is the number of users you need to support (both internal and external)?

     



  • The less removed from its origin (a desktop PC running Linux and some lame iptables GUI) these devices are, the further they move from the $1000 bracket.

    Also, once you hit the high end, chances are they'll actaully be able to do VLAN tagging, OSPF and other router-like features that help them integrate much easier.


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