I would like to know what the best hardware firewall is and where i can find it on the internet? I've heard a lot about the cisco firewalls, are they as good as cisco makes them out to be? Price is no problem, i want quality! Thanks, Travis

Cisco is very expensive, get the Linksys router about $80 it will protect your PC from those Hacker.

There are alot of real good firewalls out. Sygate,Zonealarm,Tiny,Kerio, I use Kerio now, But Sygate is suppost to be #1 for the last two years. Its just a matter of choice.

Cisco PIX firewall security series are hardware firewalls runing what are considered hardened IOS. These are hardware and not software firewalls. They have many security features not found in other units. They are on the expensive side with the low end around $500 and going up depending on the features and number of interfaces and failover desired. Cisco's tech support is excellent and their website is extensive. Check it out at www.cisco.com.

There are several very good firewalls. I personally like (and use) SonicWALL. If you need VPN support go for the TELE3, if you don't need VPN I recommend the SOHO3. The SOHO3 has a street price of about $425, The TELE3, surprisingly also has a street price of about $425. It is much better than the Linksys because it uses stateful packet inspection instead of only NAT for firewall protection.

If i understand... you'r looking for entreprise firewall, not a home cheapo such linksys. So, as "muffin" proposed, i also recommend SonicWall, Netscreen and CiscoPIX. All of them can support from 10 to thousands computers and have advanced & stong security management tools such as: - schedule based rules - DOS protection - VPN server/client - QOS/TOS management - ... However, all of them require, networking skills, otherwise ask an expert for setup.

rather than suggest the "best" firewall, you need to consider what you want to do with it. primarily, it depends on how many users you want to protect (if it's a corporate network). also, if you need granuality like strong authentication, content filtering, VPN tunnels, remote users, experience of inhouse IT staff, high throughput, failover/load balancing (including load balanced ISPs), demilitarized zones, high security - certification (EAL4, E3, orange book), packet filtering or stateful inspection & price. confusing i know, but generally if you have a spare £15k i would go for a cyberguard firestar (http://www.cyberguard.com/SOLUTIONS/Solutions_Product1.html) or higher spec. it just depends what you need to do with it. checkpoint firewall-1 is also very good but more expensive, i wouldn't go for a PIX if you don't have anyone who is confident in configuring and managing cisco routers, as it uses a command line OS not a GUI. sonicwalls and netscreens are generally positioned at the lower end of the market and are not as scalable as "better" ones, for instance a sonicwall has an odd way of dealing with demilitarized zones & unless you look at the high end sonicwall firewalls, aren't that great. if it's personal firewalls for remote users you're after, ISS bought BlackICE about 6 months ago & will provide a very good product with good support. or use zonealarm from www.zonelabs.com for a single home PC... it's cheap but effective.