[ILUG] Firewall Overhead.

[Kenn Humborg]

> With the coming of NTL as my local cable manager,
> the option to have a box on-line 24 x 7 is coming
> also. One question, Firewalls. Should I get an
> older box and use it as a dedicated firewall or
> would the overhead be small enough to run a
> firewall on my machine !! ( P III 500 with 128 Mb
> ram 20 Gb HD & SuSe 6.4)

You won't notice any overhead.

Things are conceptually clearer when you have one
box that does "security stuff" and a separate box
(or boxen) for "normal stuff".  A clearer structure
makes for a simpler (and therefore more secure) 
firewall config.

For example, with two boxes, you don't need to have
any user accounts on the firewall.  You don't need
to run a whole bunch of stuff that might (potentially)
have security flaws.

Later,
Kenn