Re: [cobalt-users] Basic Firewall on Qube 3

[Malcolm McLeary <mmcleary@xxxxxxx>]

Hi Dan,

on 1/6/01 8:53 AM, Dogsbody at dan@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> I really hope I am not asking something obvious but I have been looking all
> over the place for the last few days and just can't find anything.

Actually the obvious answer is "don't do it".

IMHO your are better off with a dedicated firewall device between your LAN
and the Net, then the Qube is simply a LAN device.  There are many devices
on the market, but I prefer those offered by Netgear ... they are even a
compatible colour.  The Netgear devices are managed via a web interface so
its consistent with the Cobalt philosophy.

One feature which was missing on the Qube2 Firewall was port mapping so the
if the Qube was being used as a firewall no other host "inside" could be
made visible.  Apart from this the Cobalt Firewall GUI was broken so it was
not possible to set it up anyway.

The GUI on the Qube3 Basic Firewall may be functional, but it still doesn't
change the basic rule that the firewall shouldn't actually provide services
or store data.  

IMHO a simple (cheap) hardware device doing Network Address Translation and
Port Mapping will be a better solution than using the Qube3 Basic Firewall.

Cheers,  Malcolm

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