RE: Firewall/Router: Dedicated Server or Appliance?

["David Gillett" <gillettdavid () fhda edu>]

> There is generally not much special about "hardware 
> firewalls" or appliances... they are just another computer.

  Except that "another computer" will probably be running a
general-purpose operating system which exposes a file system
for storing arbitrary binaries and a command interface by which 
they can be launched.  An appliance may not expose those features,
*if* they are even present at all.

  Collective wisdom is that one should run as little extraneous
code as possible on a firewall, not least because flaws in that
additional code may enable bypass of the firewall functionality.
But in a frugal business environment, it may be hard to resist
pressure to host additional services on a generic host that 
happens to provide the firewall service.  It can be much easier
to resist this pressure if an appliance is deployed -- "Sorry,
the firewall can't do that...."

David Gillett