Firewall Decision

Hi,

I have to advise my company (cable modem/10 PCs/5 servers) on a firewall to use. We had a 1.5 year old SonicWALL 230 that died a couple of days ago. Getting support for it costs around $500. Getting a new one could cost $100. A vendor is recommending a Cisco 1171 for $900.

However, in my poor knowledge of these things, I can't see why an $80 Linksys BEFSX41 wouldn't do the job! Sales people are talking to us about robustness. Practically, I don't know what it means. That it can break? Our SonicWALL died after only 1.5 years. And besides, I could get 2 BEFSX41 and have one ready as a backup. Other say packet inspection. We asked the following: if we open, let's say, port 25, will a "more robust" or more "business like" firewall inspect packets that come to that port too? Will it stop suspects? Or the other way, will hackers be able to get in through blocked ports?

In summary, I don't seem to understant what a $900 firewall will do for me more than a $80 one. Could anybody explain?

Thanks!

 

It depends on what you want to do and what you want to limit.

Are you hosting a webserver?
Do you want to do content filtering?
Do you want to be able to do reports on usage?
Do you want to be able to VPN to your network?

What kind of access do you need to allow in from the internet and what do you need to allow out?

My guess is that for your network a cheap firewall would probably work fine, but we need more information about what you want to do with it before I can make that my final recommendation.