Hard Firewall?

[Pck21]

Hey all,

I’m kinda new to the forum after stumbling upon it a while back. I was wondering if there was a “physical” firewall to put in between my router and my cable modem? Or even possibly connecting it between the ethernet port and the ethernet wire itself? Or am I just dreaming here? Thanks in advance!

[estriches]

http://www.ethicalhacker.net/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,54/topic,1219.0/

the above link is a post by Venom asking about firewall brands, it has some good brands on it and a few sites. The answer is yes you can easily put one in between the modem and the router. just check around for the right brand for you.

Also see Dons post at
http://www.ethicalhacker.net/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,54/topic,1043.0/

P.S. Welcome to the board its good to have ya around.

[Don Donzal]

Thanks for posting after stumbling on us a while back.

The post just recommended to you by estriches is a good start, but what do you need the firewall to do? Is this just for learning, does it serve a business purpose, etc. Some of the basic firewall capabilities of your router may be good enough for your needs. But if you have a specific reason for the firewall, that may dictate what to look for.

Also, when it comes down to it, all firewalls are software. Some come as appliances with chips that do the hard work. But when all is said and done, they are all software whether it is on the hard drive or a chip.

That being said, if you have an old computer laying around, you could actually build one yourself using open source software such as SmoothWall. Very small and very easy to setup.

Hope this helps,
Don

[BillV]

I was in the middle of typing up a reply, but Don pretty much covered what I was going to say 😛

I’ve been using EnGarde (link) recently and it has worked real well. However, I don’t use the GUI interface to manage the firewall, I prefer to do everything on my own through iptables. I also use it for DNS. It was a little rocky getting everything up and running at first, but since then it has worked extremely well.

[Pck21]

@don wrote:

Thanks for posting after stumbling on us a while back.

The post just recommended to you by estriches is a good start, but what do you need the firewall to do? Is this just for learning, does it serve a business purpose, etc. Some of the basic firewall capabilities of your router may be good enough for your needs. But if you have a specific reason for the firewall, that may dictate what to look for.

Also, when it comes down to it, all firewalls are software. Some come as appliances with chips that do the hard work. But when all is said and done, they are all software whether it is on the hard drive or a chip.

That being said, if you have an old computer laying around, you could actually build one yourself using open source software such as SmoothWall. Very small and very easy to setup.

Hope this helps,
Don

Thanks for all the info! I’m actually just going to use it for learning purposes and also just to add extra security to my home network if possible. I’m really interested in network security in general and wanted to set something up at my house.

[Cutaway]

I am going to recommend http://www.pfsense.com/.  Quick and easy to install.  I comes with some great features and it is built on top of FreeBSD.

Either way you will learn.

Good luck,
Cutaway

[LegioX]

And IPCOP! (http://ipcop.org/)
Why has no one mentioned this yet? I would have thought it was the most well known/popular…

But yeah, you have options  🙂

[d1spat3r]

Another item you might want to look at is http://cobia.stillsecure.org/ from StillSecure.  Granted it is in beta but it has worked pretty well for me so far.

[Author]

Posts