Re: How is a software f/w inferior to a hardware f/w?

From: Melinda Shore (shore@panix.com)
Date: 05/04/02 

From: shore@panix.com (Melinda Shore)
Date: 4 May 2002 08:21:20 -0400

In article <ZtDTPHV3WR0ia+ExqCVXTcxwj1hi@4ax.com>,
Jack Daniels <Barrister5@hotmail.com> wrote:
>If ZAP will only protect the computer it's on, how is it that the
>host/gateway I've installed it on blocks unwanted packets to the
>clients in the network? Requests from the clients are also blocked to
>the "outside/internet" zone. Those in the trusted zone, however, pass;
>as they should. Am I missing something?

I think there's an assumption that "software" (c'mon guys,
it's all software) firewalls running on Windows are running
on end hosts (singly-homed) and that the "hardware"
firewalls are necessarily bridging or, more rarely, routing.
The latter makes a certain amount of sense because you're
typically not going to connect one of those cheapie Linksys
boxes to your network and then not connect anything to it.
The former may or may not be the case - if you're using
Windows to provide your NAT, for example (ICS), the firewall
would protect the entire network behind it, as you describe
above. 

-- 
     Melinda Shore - Software longa, hardware brevis - shore@panix.com
          If you send me harassing email, I'll probably post it

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