[cobalt-security] Using a separate machine for firewalling.

[Bill Irwin <bill_irwin@xxxxxxxx>]

Just wondering if you guys have thought about trying a firewall on a
separate machine. I just set this up at home. On my home LAN, I'm
connected Via RoadRunner...so my connection is always on (as is most
cases with you guys serving).
Several companies have created linux OS based firewalls that are meant
to run as firewalls only. The one I picked was Smoothwall
(http://www.smoothwall.org). It has a neat GUI (reminds me of the Cobalt
GUI), and its VERY easy to setup. It only has basic port-forwarding
setup which is its only downfall. I have need to poke some holes in the
firewall in the UDP side of ports (mostly for serving games). I've heard
it will be addressed in the next version due out (aug 2). It would seem
to me that having a separate machine setup for a firewall would be a
very good protection from hackers getting into your system. If they were
able to get in, chances are they wouldn't have a place to go. Any
thoughts or experiences with you guys using something like this? (BTW-
my firewall was setup on a machine that was basically a Pentium 90mhz
with 16mb ram, a 400mb hard drive and two nics).

-- 
Bill Irwin
Technical Support Engineer
Sun Microsystems, Inc.