Solaris Noob wants solaris firewall

lhiggins · 05-08-2003, 09:53 AM

I was just speaking to someone who works in net security. He said solaris make better firewalls than linux.

So I jumped on the sun site. I became lost at all the packages on their site. Can someone please point me in the direction of a good firewall/router for a small home network and some links to learn this stable secure OS? I class myself as a intermediate linux user,

I will lub you for it

stickman · 05-08-2003, 12:16 PM

Whether or not Solaris makes a better firewall is debatable. Solaris firewalls are probably more common in the corporate world. Being "better" would really depend on the environment, the hardware, budget, uptime requirements, and admin skills.

For simple firewalling needs you might look into SunScreen on Sun's website. Another free alternative is Darren Reed's
IP Filter. Of course there are other options such as Checkpoint or Raptor, but I don't believe that you can get a free/demo version from them.

mdh · 05-09-2003, 02:52 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by lhiggins
I was just speaking to someone who works in net security. He said solaris make better firewalls than linux.

Trying to sell you FW1 was he ;-) Ask him how to configure a many-to-one destination NAT with it (then ask him to try to update the policy)

Linux makes a great firewall, especially due to the fact it is a hell of a lot easier to build a minimised linux system than a solaris one.
iptables is a packet pushers swiss army knife, there isn't much you cannot do with it.

For solaris - IP Filter (we run this on pretty much every host as a matter of course)

lhiggins · 05-09-2003, 03:22 AM

Thanks for getting back to me guys. I will look at sunscreen. It all sounds good. I might stick with my linux for now and see what happens when my skills improve. Also I would have just wasted all my time studying IPTABLES. Thanks dudes.