Firewall opinions wanted please

Wed Mar 17 17:19:53 UTC 2004

> > _Everyone_ (network connected) should have a firewall.  My grandma should 
> > have a firewall.  Nicole, holding dominion over this business network and 
> > its critical infrastructure, should _definitely_ have a firewall.  ;)

By "firewall", do you mean "dedicated unit that does statefull filtering"
or just "something that will block packets"?  We've successfully argued
to just about every group here at our University who came to us asking for a 
"firewall" that, given what they wanted to achieve, they could accomplish the 
same thing with simple ACLs...  

I'm sure that the cost of the ACL's (i.e. $0.00) versus the cost of a firewall 
also helped them in their decision...

Eric :)