Hardware Firewall

[JealousMidget]

Guys, I was wondering about Hardware firewalls. I was under the impression that routers were inherently firewalls. Recently I saw an add in the paper for a router and another router that was about $20 higher "w/ firewall." Is my understanding of a harware firewall flawed or is this just a ruse to get another 20 bucks out of the masses? :?:

JM:afro:

[DigitalDD]

Guys, I was wondering about Hardware firewalls. I was under the impression that routers were inherently firewalls. Recently I saw an add in the paper for a router and another router that was about higher "w/ firewall." Is my understanding of a harware firewall flawed or is this just a ruse to get another 20 bucks out of the masses? :?:

JM:afro:

many home routers use Network Address Translation [NAT] to give the user the feeling like they are behind a firewall. NAT does a good enough job separating your internal network from the outside world but a real firewall offers additional options which most broadband routers do not the main one being Stateful Inspection.

if you want to real about NAT and itts limitations check out the NAT faq: http://ece.iisc.ernet.in/innic/docs/NAT-faq.html

a good paper on firewall vs NAT router is here: http://www.ndgp.org.au/download/firewall.pdf