To choose a router/firewall or a firewall with DMZ

[otnj2ee]

I have the following questions regarding to (Cisco's) router and firewall:

1) There are two kind of firewall:the standalone firewall (hardware) and the firewall embedded in a router (software based). Is the cml (command line coding system) same for both kind of firewalls? For example, can both use these statements?:

static (dmz,outside)tcp interface 80 WWW-DMZ-IP 80 netmask 255.255.255.255)?

2)If it is YES to Que #1, can I say that

the way I learnt to code a firewall embedded in a router can also be used to code a standalone (hardware) firewall, so I do not need a new training to start with, correct?

3) Could you please recommend entry level (lower end) router(s) that comes with a firewall and also support DMZ?

4) Could you please recommend entry level (lower end) standalone firewall (hardware) that supports DMZ?

Many thanks.

[Patrick Iseli]

Instead of asking 10'000 question in 20 diffrent Cisco Forums, it might be time that you spend some reading in http://www.cisco.com/safe and some other fundamental Cisco books.

sioncerely

Patrick

[otnj2ee]

Thanks for the advice. The only problem is that the security area is not my main focus, yet I have to make a decision on it. Just by my reading, it may take me years to reach the folks on this forum's technical level (I seriously adoubt I can do it in weeks or months), and that is, only if my understanding through the reading is correct.

The question posted is valid and real. Hope to get much help as I can and a decision will be made on it. Should it be found bothering, I do apolagize.

Again, many thanks and much appreciation

[Patrick Iseli]

To take a decission you need first to know your requirments:

1.) GUI versus CLI command line interface

2.) Fonctionality versus Features

Example a Router supports more interfaces as ADSL, HDSL and has more routing fonctionality but has less security features and less performance.

3.) Budget of your solution, Hardware, software and maintenance price and management.

4.) Do you need VPN and how much session what kind of VPN?

5.) Do you need High Availability ?

How much cost your downtime of the Web Server ?

and so on ...

When you will have all this answers we can start arguing about products.

sincerely

Patrick