Performance-based Firewalls
There is one thing I hate, and that is firewalls. They all fall into 2 categories:
1) Cheap
, concise features, TERRIBLE server performance
.2) Rediculously expensive
, zillions of unneeded features,
but often good performance .All I want, for the love of the Lord above me, is a firewall (or router) with NAT that can sustain Redicoulously High Transfer Rates (min. 10 MBits) and not crash or slow down on me. And it should be cheap, that is, under $200 dollars.
If anybody knows of any, please tell me!!!!
Here are the problems with whats available:
Most low-end routers can not be used, because they use SPI, and the SPI slows down server performance to a crawling 2 MBits or less.
D-Link. Has SPI. You can not disable SPI, and this means that while for home use its great, when you run a server and incoming traffic comes from nowhere, the firewall considers all this traffic dangerous and slows performance.
SMC. With SMC you can disable SPI and it gets faster performance. But of course, SMC is not considered reliable either, from what I've heard, and my own SMC does crash, not often, but once every month or so, which is very probelmatic. Still, it would be a great test to check their server performance.
Linksys. Well, I just got a LinkSys and tried to use it as a firewall for a small server... I wanted to make sure the firewall did NOT have SPI, and it did not. BUT, then when things got really fast, the LinkSys throttled the connections like mad. I thought it was the server, until I rebooted and the problem fixed itself. But now it needs constant reboots!
The alternative is a $500-$2000 Cisco, HotBrick, or related firewall that has so many feaures I won't use at all!
Any ideas?
