Puneet Varma (Editor)

Comparison of firewalls

Updated on
Edit
Like
Comment
Share on FacebookTweet on TwitterShare on LinkedInShare on Reddit

The following is a comparison of notable firewalls, starting from simple home firewalls up to the most sophisticated Enterprise-level firewalls.

Contents

Firewall software

Ultimately, all firewalls are software-based, but some firewall solutions are provided as software solutions that run on general purpose operating systems. The following table lists different firewall software that can be installed / configured in different general purpose operating systems.

Firewall appliances

In general, a computer appliance is a computing device with a specific function and limited configuration ability, and a software appliance is a set of computer programs that might be combined with just enough operating system (JeOS) for it to run optimally on industry standard computer hardware or in a virtual machine.

A firewall appliance is a combination of a firewall software and an operating system that is purposely built to run a firewall system on a dedicated hardware or virtual machine. These include:

  • embedded firewalls: very limited-capability programs running on a low-power CPU system,
  • software-based firewall appliances: a system that can be run in independent hardware or in a virtualised environment as a virtual appliance
  • hardware-based firewall appliances: a firewall appliance that runs on a hardware specifically built to install as a network device, providing enough network interfaces and CPU to serve a wide range of purposes. From protecting a small network (a few network ports and few megabits per second throughput) to protecting an enterprise-level network (tens of network ports and gigabits per second throughput).

    • The following table lists different firewall appliances.

    Firewall rule-set Appliance-UTM filtering features comparison

    Notes

    Firewall's other features comparison

    Notes

    Non-Firewall extra features comparison

    Those features are not strictly firewall features, but are sometimes bundled with firewall software, or exist on the platform.

    NOTE: Features are marked "yes" even if implemented as a separate module that comes with the platform on which firewall sits.

    IDS: real-time firewall that logs/sniffs/blocks suspicious connections that are not part of rule-set.

    VPN (Virtual Private Network) Types are: PPTP, L2TP, MPLS, IPsec, SSL/SSH.

    Profile selection: The user can switch between sets of firewall settings, e.g. for use at work, at home, and on public connections.

    References

    Comparison of firewalls Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA