November 21, 2008

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:: Firewall Comparison Chart

Feature Description Advanced PTWall Corporate PTWall Notes
Firewall:      
Stateful Inspection Yes Yes  
Local IP Addresses Unlimited Unlimited F1
Users Supported 250-5000 n/a F1
Dynamic Network Address Translation Yes Yes F1
Static Network Address Translation Yes SmoothHost F2
Outgoing (Egress) Traffic Control Yes SmoothRule F3
Support multiple public IP addresses Yes SmoothHost F4
Port forward from public IP address to DMZ/local IP Yes Yes  
"Round Robin" Port Forward to multiple DMZ servers Yes No F5
Detection and blocking of port agile Peer to Peer traffic Yes SmoothRule F6
Administer maintained IP block list Yes Yes  
       
Networking:      
Total Network Interfaces 4 Standard, Maximum 20 3 N1
External Network (Internet) Interfaces 1 to 19 (of total) 1 N2
Internal Network Zones (Local Networks and DMZs) 1 to 19 (of total) 1 or 2 (of total) N3
Ethernet Yes Yes  
PPP connections (ISDN, ADSL and analogue modem) Yes Yes N4
PPPoA ADSL support Yes Yes  
PPPoE ADSL support Yes Yes  
PPTP ADSL support Yes Yes  
PPTP ADSL support Yes Yes  
Split traffic between multiple external network interfaces Yes No N5
Fail-over from one external interface to another Automatic Manual N6
Routing protocol support (RIP) Yes No  
Configure static routes Yes Yes  
VLAN Trunking (802.1Q) support Yes No N7
Naming of Network Interfaces Yes Yes  
Multiple local network subnets Yes Yes  
Bind multiple IP addresses to a Green NIC Yes Yes  
Red interface MAC address spoofing Yes Yes N8
Configurable Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) and TCP transmit/receive window sizes Yes Yes  
       
Hardware:      
Multi Processor support (SMP) Yes No  
Hardware (SCSI) RAID Yes No H1
SCSI (Non RAID) Disk Yes Yes H2
SATA Disk Yes Yes
IDE Disk Yes Yes  
IDE DMA support Yes Yes  
IDE/SCSI CDROM support Yes Yes  
10/100/1000 (Gigabit) Ethernet card Yes Yes H4
Multi-port Ethernet card Yes Yes H5
USB ADSL modems and PCI ADSL modem cards Yes Yes H6
ISDN cards and terminal adaptors Yes Yes H7
Analogue modems Yes Yes H8
Compact Flash support Yes Yes H9
1 Gigabyte plus memory support Yes No  
USB keyboard support Yes Yes  
Serial Console Yes Yes  
Display ADSL modem signal strength information Yes Yes H10
Un-interruptible Power Supply support Yes Yes H11
UPS Network Slave Mode Yes Yes H11
       
Installation / Maintenance      
Includes security hardened Linux operating system Yes Yes IN1
SmoothWall and Linux security updates Free Free IN2
Installation from CDROM Yes Yes  
Installation from network server Yes Yes  
Installation from a USB CD/DVD Device Yes Yes  
Configuration backup to hard disk file/floppy and restore Yes Yes  
Backup/restore configuration from USB device Yes Yes  
Automatic configuration backup (time of day) Yes Yes  
Partial configuration restore Yes Yes IN3
Install new device drivers from floppy disk/CDROM Yes Yes  
Automatic download of new updates Yes Yes IN4
Bulk application of updates from CD at installation time Yes Yes IN5
Automatic installation of any modules present on the firewall installation CD Yes Yes IN6
Ethernet cable status reporting Yes Yes IN7
Un-install modules Yes Yes  
Pre-installed software Yes Yes IN8
       
Configuration:      
Configured via a web browser GUI Yes Yes  
Restrict configuration access to specified local and public IP addresses Yes Yes  
Administration users with limited access (e.g. log viewers, VPN, Guardian web content filtering) Yes Yes  
Drop down lists of common IP services/ports Yes Yes  
On-line Help appears in a seperate pop-up window Yes Yes  
GUI Home page displays configurable information on the system status, VPN, firewall reports, traffic statistics etc. Yes Yes C1
All rule lists and log files can be sorted by any column Yes Yes C2
       
Authentication:      
Microsoft Active Directory (LDAP) User Authentication Yes No A1
OpenLDAP User Authentication Yes No A2
Local User Authentication Database Yes Yes A3
Authentication via Ident client for Microsoft Windows Yes Yes A4
SSL Login page for user authentication in transparent mode Yes Yes A5
SmoothGuardian web access can be controlled by User/Group Name Yes Yes  
SmoothGuardian web access can be controlled by IP/IP Address Range/Network Address Yes Yes  
User Internet access controlled by User/Group Name as well as IP Address/IP Address Range/Network Address Yes No  
Inter-zone access controlled by user authentication Yes No A6
VPN user access controlled by user authentication Yes No A7
       
Intrusion Detection:      
Intrusion Detection System Yes Yes  
Intrusion Alert Messages by email or SMS text message Yes Add Module IDS1
Categorisation of Intrusion Detection System signatures Yes Yes  
IDS signatures downloadable from SmoothWall Yes Yes  
       
Virtual Private Network (VPN):      
Site-to-site IPSec VPN Yes Add Module V1
Mobile (Road Warrior) or home user IPSec VPN Yes Add Module V2
Mobile (Road Warrior) or home user L2TP VPN Yes Add Module V3
VPN Tunnels 5 (Included) to 500 Up to 100 V4
AES and 3DES Encryption Yes Add Module  
x509 Certificate Authentication Yes Add Module  
Pre-Shared Key (PSK/Shared Secret) Authentication Yes Add Module  
NAT Traversal (NAT-T) Yes Add Module V6
VPN secure local (wireless) connection Yes No V7
Logging of Road Warrior VPN connections (with option to send alert messages) Yes Yes V8
PPTP forwarding and pass-through Yes Yes  
       
Logging and Reporting:      
Disk logging of all firewall/IDS events, web traffic etc. Yes Yes  
Configure/enable individual logging functions Yes Yes L1
Forced log file rotation in the event of low free disk space Yes Yes  
Log files on RAM disk Yes Yes  
Log filtering (eg by Source IP/Port, Destination IP/Port) Yes Yes  
Google-like paginated log file viewers Yes Yes  
All rule lists and log files can be sorted by any column Yes Yes L2
Scheduled firewall log analysis, IDS analysis, traffic reporting Yes Add Module L3
Reports produced in text, HTML, CSV format etc. Yes Yes  
Outgoing (egress) traffic reporting/analysis Yes Yes L4
SNMP Support Yes No L5
Remote Syslog support Yes Yes  
       
DHCP Server:      
DHCP server support for local (Green) networks Multiple 1 or 2  
DHCP server support for DMZ Multiple DMZ Single DMZ  
View DHCP leases granted Yes Yes  
Display list of MAC addresses on local/DMZ networks Yes Yes  
DHCP Relay Yes No  
       
Miscellaneous:      
Web Proxy Server Yes Yes  
DNS Proxy Server Yes Yes  
NTP service for computers on local networks/DMZ Yes Yes  
Modularisation of core services/components (eg Web Proxy server, DHCP server) Yes Yes M1
Timed/delayed shutdown/reboot Yes Yes  
       
Available Modules:      
Web Content Filtering (SmoothGuardian) Yes Yes  
Bandwidth Management/QoS (SmoothTraffic) Yes Yes  
VPN Gateway (SmoothTunnel) Integrated Yes V1-8
VPN Remote Node n/a Yes  
Internet Access Control/Outbound Rules (SmoothRule) Integrated Yes F3
Incident Alerting and Reporting (SmoothMonitor) Integrated Yes L3
Support for Multiple DMZ Services (SmoothHost) Integrated Yes F4
       
System Requirements:      
Processor PIII-500 Pentium S1
Memory 128 MByte 64 MByte S2
Hard Disk 4 GByte 1 Gbyte S3
Flash Memory (alternative to Hard Disk) 256 MByte 256 MByte S3

Firewall:
F1
Advanced Firewall supports 250 authenticated users as standard, expandable to 5000 users with the addition of user licence packs. There is no restriction on the number of IP addresses supported, however it is recommended that Corporate Firewall 4.0 should be limited to a maximum of 250 users.

F2
Static Network Address Translation (SNAT) (Source Mapping) is an integral component of Advanced Firewall. For Corporate Firewall 4.0, the SmoothHost add-on module introduces this facility.

F3
Outbound (egress) traffic control (user access to Internet services) is an integral component of Advanced Firewall. For Corporate Firewall 4.0, the SmoothRule add-on module introduces this facility.

F4
Support for multiple public aliased IP address is a standard feature of Advanced Firewall. For Corporate Firewall 4.0, the SmoothHost add-on module introduces this facility.

F5
For load balancing, where for example high traffic applications are served by multiple web servers responding to page requests from a single public IP address.

F6
Advanced Firewall incorporates traffic inspection technology to can detect and block Peer to Peer (P2P) traffic such as KaZaA, Bit Torrent and eDonkey, regardless of which port the file sharing software attempts to use. For Corporate Firewall 4.0 the SmoothRule add-on module introduces this facility.

Networking:
N1
Advanced firewall will support 4 NICs as standard, licence expandable to 20 NICs and VLAN trunk (802.1Q) interfaces by licence. At least one NIC is required for Corporate Firewall's Local Protected Network (Green) network interface if used with a PPP/Dial-Up connection, a minimum of 2 NICs with an Ethernet connection to the External Network (Internet).

N2
Corporate Firewall support a single active External Network (Internet) connection. Corporate Firewall allows the 3 NICs can be configured as: a single External Internet (Red) interface plus either: one each of Local Protected Network (Green) and DMZ (Orange) or two Local Protected Network (ie no DMZ) or two DMZs (no Local Protected Network). Advanced Firewall can support multiple active External Network connections as any NIC can be designated as External (Red), Local Protected (Green) or DMZ (Orange).

N3
Multiple internal network zones allow the physical separation of different user groups, internal servers, publicly accessible servers etc. Inter-zone access rules permit strictly limited access from one zone to another (by server/IP address, port/service etc.).

N4
Advanced Firewall, Corporate Firewall 4.0 can all support a single active PPP (dial-up) connection (eg ISDN, ADSL modem or analogue modem). Multiple connection profiles (eg ISP details) can be stored.

N5
Split traffic between multiple external (Red) network interfaces (eg configure which IPs use a particular external network interface).

N6
If an Internet connection should fail then Advanced Firewall can be configured to automatically route all traffic from the failed interface to another. There is no limit to how many interfaces can be set in the failure cascade path, nor is there any limitation on the type of interface that can be used (Ethernet, ADSL modem, ISDN or analogue modem).

N7
802.1Q VLAN trunking support allowing communication with VLAN capable switches and the routing of traffic between VLANs. N8 For easier support of cable modems which will typically only communicate with the MAC address from which the modem or Internet connection was initially configured.

Hardware:
See the Hardware Compatibility Guide: http://www.smoothwall.net/support/hcg for full information on the hardware supported by SmoothWall Security Software.

H1
Supported RAID controllers will Include Compaq, Dell PERC and DAC960.

H2
SCSI controllers from Adaptec, Future Domain, Sym Bios, Initio, Advansys and BusLogic are supported.

H4
Gigabit Ethernet cards from Intel, 3Com, Broadcom and other manufacturers.

H5
Multi-Port NIC support includes Intel quad and dual port cards, 3Com dual port cards and the DLink DE580 4 port card.

H6
Over 30 types of USB ADSL modems are supported, along with Ethernet connected ADSL modems and the BeWAN PCI ADSL card modem.

H7
Drivers for numerous PCI ISDN cards are included, together with support for USB ISDN and RS232 connected ISDN Terminal Adapters.

H8
Hayes compatible RS232 connected analogue modems and a number of ISA card modems are supported.

H9
Compact Flash can be used as an alternative to hard disk for appliance applications. Minimum capacity is 256 MByte with 512 MByte recommended. The flash memory must present itself as an IDE device. Logs will be stored in a non-persistent (volatile) RAM disk, thus the use of Syslog for off-box log recording is recommended.

H10
Bewan PCI ADSL modem.

H11
Supports APC models. Advanced Firewall and Corporate Firewall 4.0 can support UPS slave mode operation, where up to 5 systems (eg Advanced Firewall, Corporate Firewall 4.0, Corporate Guardian 4.0, Unix/Microsoft Windows system running apcupsd software) on the network can share the same UPS.

Installation / Maintenance:
IN1
SmoothWall Security Solutions are based on a cut-down security hardened version of the Linux operating system, where all unnecessary components have been removed from the operating system, reducing disk and memory utilisation, improving security and performance.

IN2
Security updates and bug fixes are supplied free of charge for all supported SmoothWall products.

IN3
To be able to select which rules/configuration information to restore from a SmoothWall Configuration Backup (allowing specific rules, such as Port Forward rules, to be copied between systems).

IN4
Option to automatically download and store any new updates on the firewall, which can then be applied at a convenient time by administrator command.

IN5
All updates (patches) present on an installation CD will automatically be applied.

IN6
Any modules present on the same CD as the firewall software will be automatically installed (single disk installation).

IN7
MAC address of each Network Interface Card (NIC) displayed. Network cable status (present/not present) displayed to help identify a particular NIC when multiple NICs of the same type are installed.

IN8
SmoothWall and its authorised Resellers can supply pre-installed versions of Advanced Firewall and Corporate Firewall 4.0, providing pre-configured installations.

Configuration
C1
Configuration options allow the GUI Home (Control) page to display a variety of information, including alert messages, system status, VPN status, traffic statistics, firewall reports and update/blocklist status.

C2
All rule lists and log files can be sorted on any column (eg IP address, source port etc.)

Authentication:
A1
Integrated Kerberos user authentication system to work with LDAP authentication systems such as Microsoft Windows 2000® and Microsoft Windows 2003® Server using Active Directory.

A2
Support for the common InetOrgPerson (RFC2798) schema.

A3
Corporate Firewall 4.0, in conjunction with the SmoothGuardian Web Content Filtering add-on module, support a user authentication database maintained on the SmoothWall firewall. This authentication system can only be used by the SmoothGuardian module to control web access. With Advanced Firewall, this authentication database can also be used to control users' access to Internet services (outbound/egress rules) and inter-zone access.

A4
An Ident client for Microsoft Windows™ operating systems can be used to identify the computer user to the SmoothWall system.

A5
The SSL Login page automatically senses from the users' browsers if it should display in English, German, Italian, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, French or Swedish.

A6
Multiple internal network zones allow the physical separation of different user groups, internal servers, publicly accessible servers etc. Inter-zone access rules permit strictly limited access from one zone to another (by server/IP address, port/service etc.). User authentication can be used to control which access control policies (rule-sets) are applied to a user session.

A7
Access for VPN users to internal servers and services can be controlled by user authentication, ie determines the policies (rule-sets) are applied to that VPN session.

Intrusion Detection:
IDS1
Email and SMS text message alerting (generated in response to suspicious activity detected by the Intrusion Detection System) is an integral component of Advanced Firewall. For Corporate Firewall 4.0, the SmoothMonitor add-on module introduces this facility.

Virtual Private Networking (VPN):
V1
Site-to-site VPN is an integral component of Advanced Firewall. For Corporate Firewall 4.0, the SmoothTunnel add-on module introduces this facility.

V2
IPSec VPN connectivity for single computers (mobile/laptop/home user/Road Warrior users) is an integral component of Advanced Firewall. For Corporate Firewall 4.0, the SmoothTunnel add-on module introduces this facility.

V3
Layer 2 Tunnelling Protocol (L2TP) VPN connectivity for single computers (mobile/laptop/home user/Road Warrior users) is an integral component of Advanced Firewall. For Corporate Firewall 4.0 it is provided by the SmoothTunnel 4.0 add-on module.

V4
Advanced Firewall supports 5 VPN tunnels as standard (any combination of IPSec site-to-site, IPSec Road Warrior or L2TP Road Warrior tunnels). This can be expanded to a maximum of 500 tunnels by the addition of SmoothConnection VPN licence packs. Corporate Firewall 4.0 requires a VPN add-on module for VPN connectivity and it is recommended that the VPN tunnel count should not exceed 100.

V5
Advanced Firewall and the SmoothTunnel VPN Gateway module for Corporate Firewall both include a Certificate Authority (CA) for the creation and issue of self-signed x509 certificates. Alternatively an external Certificate Authority, such as Microsoft Windows 2000/2003 Server may be used, or an external certificate provider such as Verisign or Thawte.

V6
Advanced Firewall supports NAT Traversal (NAT-T) mode for IPSec VPN connections as standard. For Corporate Firewall 4.0, the SmoothTunnel add-on module introduces this facility.

V7
Either L2TP or IPSec VPN can be used for local as well as remote (Internet) VPN connections with Advanced Firewall. This is principally used for Wireless (WiFi) access, providing secure L2TP connections with the user PC authenticated using an x509 certificate and the data encrypted using the 3DES encryption algorithm. IPSec internal subnet routing can also be configured.

V8
Advanced Firewall will log each connection and disconnection by mobile/laptop/home user/Road Warrior VPN users, with option to display an alert message on the GUI Home (Control) page or send Alert message by email or SMS text message. For Corporate Firewall 4.0 this requires the SmoothMonitor module.

Logging and Reporting:
L1
To reduce disk space utilisation for non hard-disk operation (eg flash memory).

L2
All log files and rule lists can be sorted on any column (eg IP address, port, time etc.)

L3
Advanced Firewall includes scheduled reporting. For Corporate Firewall 4.0, the SmoothMonitor add-on module introduces this facility.

L4
Advanced Firewall and Corporate Firewall 4.0 provide more detailed traffic statistics, with the option to generate an alert message reports if the current inbound or outbound traffic exceeds a configurable threshold. There is also a volume threshold where an alert can be generated if the total traffic volume exceeds a configurable limit for a daily/weekly/monthly limit. For alert message generation, Corporate Firewall 4.0 requires the SmoothMonitor add-on module.

L5
Query an Advanced Firewall system to report management information, including disk utilisation and traffic information.

Miscellaneous:
M1
Modularisation of many components/services, such as the DHCP server and the Web Proxy, allows them to be removed as desired. This allows the system to be customised and the memory/system requirements reduced if desired. The required modules can be configured at install time, thus the system can be tailored to the target hardware.

System Requirements:

S1
For Advanced Firewall the minimum recommended processor is a Pentium III 500 MHz. For Corporate Firewall 4.0 any Intel Pentium compatible processor or 166 MHz or greater. Compatible processors from AMD and VIA are supported.

S2
For Advanced Firewall the minimum recommended memory is 128 Mbytes DDR or similar fast RAM. For Corporate Firewall 4.0 minimum memory is 64 Mbytes with 96 Mbytes recommended. For Advanced Firewall and Corporate Firewall 4.0 the maximum useable memory is 4 GBytes. More RAM memory is beneficial for web proxy cache performance and is necessary for operation of the SmoothGuardian web content filtering module.

S3
For Corporate Firewall 4.0 the minimum recommended hard disk capacity is 1 GByte. For Advanced Firewall 4 GBytes disk is recommended. Alternatively Advanced Firewall and Corporate Firewall 4.0 can utilise compact flash memory instead of a hard disk, when 256 Mbytes flash memory is the minimum recommended figure. The compact flash must appear as an IDE device, with logging to non-persistent (volatile) RAM disk.

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