Firewall Wizards: Re: stealth firewalls

["Volker Tanger" <volker.tanger () discon de>]

Greetings!

Irwin Lazar wrote:

> I'm reading up a bit on stealth mode firewalls and was wondering what the
> industry view is toward these types of boxes.  From my research, stealth
> mode firewalls act as LAN switches or bridges, and do not actively modify
> the packets they process (such as decrementing TTL).  Is this correct?

Usually bridges, yes.


> It seems there are some obvious advantages to stealth mode firewalls since
> they are completely hidden at the IP layer, but I'm wondering if there are
> any significant drawbacks.  

One major drawback is that they - by their very concept - don't do 
routing. If you have more than 2 interfaces ("inside" and "outside") 
that is a major problem. Plus you then need a lot of routers. One of our 
multi-network customers has 10+ networks in the same house to be 
separated - one multi-NIC non-stealth firewall - or one stealth FW plus 
10+ routers. Guess what is easier to manage...
Second problem is doing VPN - or: not! Without a (visible) VPN peer 
there is no VPN to be established.

> It seems that products are limited, only Sun's
> SunScreen & BSD Linux support this functionality.

Lucent Bricks are appliances.


--

Volker Tanger  <volker.tanger () discon de>
 Wrangelstr. 100, 10997 Berlin, Germany
    DiSCON GmbH - Internet Solutions
         http://www.discon.de/

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