About software, hardware, and chip-level firewalls

The firewall can be divided into software firewall and hardware firewall as well as chip-level firewall if it is divided from the soft and hardware form of firewall.

　The first type: Software firewalls

A software firewall runs on a specific computer that requires the support of a client's pre-installed computer operating system, which is generally the gateway to the entire network. Commonly known as "Personal Firewall." Software firewalls, like other software products, need to be installed and configured on the computer before they can be used. Firewall manufacturers do network version of the software firewall is most famous than checkpoint. Using this kind of firewall, network management needs to be familiar with the operating system platform.

　　The second type: hardware firewalls

The hardware firewall described here refers to the so-called "hardware Firewall". The addition of the word "so-called" is for the chip-level firewall said. The biggest difference is whether they are based on a dedicated hardware platform. Most firewalls in the market today are such so-called hardware firewalls, they are all based on the PC architecture, which means they are not much different from the average home PC. Run some trimmed and simplified operating systems on these PC architecture computers, most commonly with older versions of UNIX, Linux, and FreeBSD systems. It is worth noting that this type of firewall is still affected by the security of the OS itself, as it continues to be someone else's kernel.

Traditional hardware firewall should have at least three ports, respectively, network, extranet and DMZ area (demilitarized zone), now some new hardware firewall often extends the port, common four-port firewall generally will be the fourth port as configuration port, management port. Many firewalls can further extend the number of ports.

　The third type: chip-level firewall

Chip-level firewalls are based on a dedicated hardware platform and do not have an operating system. Proprietary ASIC chips make them faster than other types of firewalls, with more processing power and higher performance. Do this kind of firewall most famous manufacturers have NetScreen, Fortinet, Cisco and so on. Such firewalls, because they are dedicated OS (operating system), are less vulnerable to the firewall itself, but the price is relatively high.