[CentOS] Theoretical Firewall Specs?

Benjamin Hackl b.hackl at focusmr.com
Wed Jan 18 11:09:20 UTC 2012


Dear Jason,

On Tue, 17 Jan 2012 15:36:09 -0800
"Jason T. Slack-Moehrle" <slackmoehrle at gmail.com> wrote:

> How does one determine the specs for a firewall?

Depends on your requirements. If you just want some port
filtering/forwarding it can be done by low power Atom machines or
even some old hardware (Pentium 2 possibly even older). ARM, MIPS
are also fine but check if your software/OS runs on that very special
architecture. If it is a mission critical firewall I'd recommend buying
new hardware instead of reusing your ten year old Pentium 3. If
you need new memory it's often cheaper to buy 8 GB of RAM instead of 1,
2 or 4GB nowadays.

Don't skimp on network adapters! 10$ adapters are usually not built
for 24/7 usage.

If you want to do deep packet inspection, (i.e. antispam, antivirus,
etc.) you should invest in decent (!) hardware.

If you'd like to access your firewall remotely you should consider a
remote management card like ILO, DRAC.

UPS, diesel motor, failover cluster, how much money do you have? ;-)

Brgds


-- 
Freundliche Gruesse/Best Regards
Benjamin Hackl
IT/Administration

Media FOCUS Research Ges.m.b.H.
Maculangasse 8, 1220 Wien Austria
Tel: +43 1 258 97 01-295
b.hackl at focusmr.com



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