You can have up to 14 interfaces on the mid models and
go up to 26 on the big boxes.


Since the Sidewinder O.S. [secure o.s.] is extremely
locked down, all hardware drivers have to be added to
the O.S. It's not like you can just add your own
drivers.

What this meant is that many, many, time someone would
buy a server that had components that were not on the
HCL.

What this meant was down time for the firewall and
also hours and hours of support calls to try and
troubleshoot problems for hours to track down a bad
nic card, etc.

With the appliance, all of that down time goes away
because you know it will just work. I did an install
once and the server came with 3com 905-c's which were
not supported. The model that did work was the 905-b,
which didn't have netbios blasts built into the nic.

Had to burn two days waiting for the right part to
show up.


--- Daniel Sichel <daniels@...> wrote:

> I have not yet seen version 7, but it sounds pretty
> good. I hear the GUI
> is or soon will be Java based which makes me
> hesitant, Java always
> seems slow and kludgy with lots of annoying bugs in
> user interfaces. I
> complained bitterly for years over the PHP issues,
> and now in 6.1x they
> have it really well executed IMHO. I do have one
> question, what is the
> maximum number of interfaces in one of their
> appliances? I have eight
> interfaces on my appliance, all in use, and it
> looks like I will soon
> be needing a ninth. If they supported more
> interfaces that would be a
> compelling reason to upgrade.
>
>
>
> Thanks for all the comments about this. I am not
> really sure how I feel
> about the end of life issue. On the one hand I
> understand Secure needs
> to generate revenue and control costs which dictates
> older issue
> equipment going end of life, but on the other hand,
> this type of
> upgrade is expensive and disruptive, and I wonder
> about what is owed
> the end user who drops tens of thousands of dollars
> into a firewall then
> pays support too. As I often have said, it's one
> thing when I pay $79
> bucks for an off the shelf device at Best Buy and
> call support, but
> totally another when I pay these prices. This is
> why I WON"T USE
> SYMANTEC PRODUCTS. I guess I feel like Secure
> support is generally
> very, very good but their product policies leave
> something to be
> desired. It's like Winston Churchill's description
> of democracy,
> "...It's the worst form of government in the world
> -except all the
> others."
>
>
>
> Daniel Sichel, CCNP, MCSE
>
> Network Engineer
>
> Ponderosa Telephone (559) 868-6367
>
>


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