SPAMed in PM

[denverpilot]

Running a remote desktop on one of his workstations to get a screen with his inventory system is 100kbps or less.

I pull backups across a tunnel, lots of blinkenlights while that is running .

Yup. Like I said, "if it meets your needs".

Most people don't know what their needs are, but that's a different problem altogether.

 

[weilke]

Fortunately the bps overhead will be low. While the IMS interface is GUI, it's all text and rarely any photos. And I do have a static IP.

Mostly I just want/need the laptop to behave like a workstation on the LAN when I am travelling to conferences and meetings.

A TZ205 with the Global VPN client installed on your laptop will do that for you. You fire up the laptop, you start the client and a network connection will pop up that has your computer with an IP that is inside of your company network (192.168.x.x or something along those lines). From that point on, your computer will act as if it is inside of your company network. You can print to your printers, connect to your server, connect to a DVR or IP camera etc.

There are about 8 ways of doing this cheaper than with a TZ205. If I understand you right, you have a switch directly plugged into the router provided by the ISP. If that is the case, you may want to get something in between there anyway to keep the evil internet spirits out.

Didn't you mention before that you had an issue with staff productivity and internet surfing while on the clock ? You can certainly block websites and services and I believe you can set up monitoring for what sites are being visited from different workstations.

 

[denverpilot]

Mike... Maybe a little more "DIY" than a TZ device, but for just trying out whether or not you want to fiddle with firewall stuff and to have a decent way to VPN... A spare PC with two network ports and a copy of pfSense (free) is hard to beat. Just throwing it out there. All that one will cost is time if you already have a PC lying around. If you decided you liked it, a better PC with enough CPU to do it well would still be cheap.

pfSense.org ...

 

[wsuffa]

Mike... Maybe a little more "DIY" than a TZ device, but for just trying out whether or not you want to fiddle with firewall stuff and to have a decent way to VPN... A spare PC with two network ports and a copy of pfSense (free) is hard to beat. Just throwing it out there. All that one will cost is time if you already have a PC lying around. If you decided you liked it, a better PC with enough CPU to do it well would still be cheap.

pfSense.org ...

pfSense is good, Untangle is another option. I have a network on Untangle behind a TZ100 that takes out almost all spam. UT can be a firewall by itself - throughput based on the processor speed you run it on.

 

[jsstevens]

pfSense is good, Untangle is another option. I have a network on Untangle behind a TZ100 that takes out almost all spam. UT can be a firewall by itself - throughput based on the processor speed you run it on.

Is IPCop still around? It was free and pretty easy to set up. We ran our business firewall on that for several years and it did very well. We started having trouble with driver compatibility and then went to SonicWall.

John