I need recommendations on NAT/Firewall hardware

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Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 11, 2004
Messages
163
hello -

i work at home and i have a business line coming into my house and i host several non-production functions for the company.

due to some ever-bungling changes at comcast, i will soon be without any sort of NAT/Firewall hardware.

i'm looking at this netgear equipment for the job:
http://www.netgear.com/products/details/FVX538.php

there's one feature that i really need however, and i do not know exactly what to call it (port forwarding sounds too broad, though it may be correct.).

here's the scenario - a fellow developer cannot connect to my development sql server because his ISP does not allow port 1433 transmissions.
so i receive his 14333 transmission and route it internally to x.x.x.x:1433.

this is a must.

other than that, it looks like i can get what i need out of a wide range of products.

any help would be appreciated.
 
I'm not real familar with that particular unit but from reading the information on that page it sounds like it should do everything you need and then some.

As for the issue with connecting to your SQL server - you are looking for port forwarding, however you have to make sure the router you go with supports setting seperate internal and external ports, I think most routers now days do, and a higher end unit like the one you are looking at should have it. You basically set the external port to listen to and then set what internal IP and port it needs to be forwarded to.

-Matt :cool:
 
thanks for the reply. yeah, that unit i posted is a bit of a beast for what i need. i'm kinda shooting high with the expectation of a corresponding feature set. (not to mention i used to run two lines to my house, so the dual WAN is appealing in case i do that again).

i have a linksys wrt54gs which has been sitting around. it doesn't have the seperate internal/external port settings, unfortunately. so i re-flashed it with an open source variety of firmware which didn't have that option either. ;(
 
Yeah I can't remember if my linksys had that feature or not - I know my cisco does :) nothing wrong with buying a little more than you need, keeps from having to buy more equipment if your needs change a bit.
 
Are you unable to change what port your server listens on? That would be the simplest solution.
 
unfortunately, there are quite a few things that look for the current port. spending $350 and having a piece of hardware that i can keep is less expensive than all the application changes and testing which would be necessary with a port change.

getting the hardware is a little speedbump in the road for now, but a longer-term win.
 
i ordered that netgear fvx358.
through non-obvious links i found the operations/instructions pdf manual on their site and it was actually informative - it appears that the appliance will do what i need it to do.

thanks for all the inquires and replies.
 
Why not a Linux/BSD based firewall Distro? Like Smoothwall/Astaro/Mandrake/M0n0Wall/etc?

Full control, and tweakability for the future. They all support port translation like you are asking for as well. All you need is a reliable box w/ new common NIC's
 
i looked into that.

i need something now, and i wasn't interested in building a machine with all the other things i have going on.

i also need it to go into my rack, preferably in a 1U space. i looked into 1U enclosures for epia mini-itx boards for that. i really want to build one at some point, but not right now.

i also looked up pre-made smoothwall appliances which are epia boards in 1U enclosures using smothwall - for around $800.

after 2-day shipping i got the netgear for $357. plus it has dual-WAN load-balancing or failover capability (which i really could have used a year ago, and may need again soon.) it's really kinda hard to beat.
 
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