Firewalls

[mrbios]

I know this gets asked constantly in here, but I'm struggling to settle on something, and I'm not sure about what "size" of device I'll need.

 

Need a new firewall this year, apart from the basics i want the following requirements:

Application control

IPS

 

Nice to have but not essential:

Anti malware (find firewalls aren't great at this anyway, but it's nice to have that extra layer, although most charge a yearly fee for this on top of the support?)

Web filtering (This would be turned off unless we had an issue with our smoothwall box, but handy to have as a backup)

 

Roughly 650 school owned devices, up to 350 byod at present. 100/100 internet connection.

 

How does pfsense match up to the larger names like fortinet and palo alto? Seems like a nice cheap solution, albeit not the most intuitive from the looks of the interface, what's the edugeek opinion there? As always, any other suggestions please fire away!

 

Note:

I know the smoothwall could do this with UTM, but i don't like smoothwalls firewall. Fantastic filter though.

[twin--turbo]

Forti's can get expensive to maintain , as can all the upper tier vendors when you add on the feature licences. I have a number of Forttis and ASA's .. Prefer the latter but both do their job.

 

But pFsense does do a nice job and has a lot of options... I used to run some using old WatchGuard hardware ( never liked WG's software ). I would say it's worth a couple of days experimentation.

 

TT

[njc235]

Don't forget Sonicwall. What is your internet pipe? You should look at the spec of any device with all of the UTM features switched on - sometimes quoted as AV throughput and match this to your pipe speed or exceed it if budget allows. Firewall max throughput rates are slightly irrelevant. If you do look at the Forti range, I wouldn't look below the 200D as they have the separate processors for CPU and network processing. Its AV Throughput is 600M.