FreeBSD based 'Floppy Firewall'

eboy writes "Gnatbox is floppy only FreeBSD based distribution. It does NAT and some pretty comprehensive firewalling. To me it looks like what LRP would like to be. Too bad the buy-in is $995!"

$995 is a bit too steep for a sw-based firewall

[questionlp]

It may be a very good solution for a small or mid-sized business who needs to have a firewall up and running without too much hassle. It's true that there are many software-based solutions out there... I'd prefer a tightened hardware-based firewall solution if security is the biggest issue (which it is for many companies, including the one I work for).

But for $995, many people would rather piece together a 486/33 machine with 16MB of RAM and two ISA network cards...place Open/FreeBSD and close out the ports that aren't needed and lock it down tight... heck... I might actually do that :)

Re:$995 is a bit too steep for a sw-based firewall

[Mark Pitman]

$995 is cheap compared to some of the more prominent packages like Checkpoint's Firewall-1, NAI's Gauntlet or Raptor's Eagle. They can end up costing you around $15,000 just for the software alone!

Re:$995 is a bit too steep for a sw-based firewall

[Bishop]

Ofcourse you do get more from those big packages. More proxies, more auth methods, more filter methods, and in the case of FW-1 more bugs (read bugtraq) :-)

Re:rip off

[questionlp]

I partially agree with you in that US$995 seems expensive... but many companies want a solution that is already pre-built and ready to go without too much of a hassle. Also... cheaper solutions may end up having higher TCO than their more expensive counterpart.

Even the company I work for paid well over $1000 for our firewall setup running off of a customized Linux kernel (I don't know the version or anything like that). But the system itself does have it's nice tools, and has it's problems as well.

As I have said before, many people can make a Firewall/Router from $200 worth of equipment running OpenBSD or FreeBSD (I'd recommend the former, although I know people who have made their own firewall running off of FreeBSD 3.2-STABLE).

Of course there are companies that think `you get what you pay' and purchase $20,000 firewall solutions and think that a homemade or an unknown company-made firewall won't cut it. There are situations that they are correct in choosing the very expensive solution... but not all solutions fit in every situation.

Just to wrap up my rambling... to some people... US$995 is too expensive... for those people... you can build just a great firewall for $200 (which I'm working on right now)... to the rest of the people (mostly large corporations where security is a huge issue and concern), $995 is miniscule.

Re:rip off -- try sharethenet

[sid crimson]

http://www.sharethenet.com Free to those who know a little about Linux. Minor req's and effective gateway. Fits on a floppy. If you want a couple more features, or don't want to fuss spend $70 and get the retail version. It's safe and friendly, just like Linux. :-) -sid

PicoBSD

[Phyre]

What's wrong with PicoBSD? Isn't that what this is based on anyway?

Had to do a little searching to find out where it was, I had lost track. Was considering it for a while. I used FreeBSD on an old 486 w/small hard drive for a while (dial-on-demand Ethernet/PPP router, firewall, NAT). Now I've switched to OpenBSD for security reasons.

Here's that link to PicoBSD for those interested:
http://www.freebsd.org /~picobsd/picobsd/doc_router/README.en [freebsd.org]

Looks like the only benefits to this Gnat Box thing are added menus and easy-config stuff. Do you really want someone who needs menus and such admining your firewall??? Eep!