By: Joacim Melin
Photo: Andreas Eklund
Translation by: Rebecca Foreman

Assuming that you already have a firewall, there are two reasons why you might read this article. Either you are curious about how your firewall scored or you are dissatisfied with the firewall you have now. Or is it a combination of the two? Nowadays, any company with a fixed Internet connection and its own IP addresses is likely to have some kind of firewall. Nothing is impossible, but we have a lot of faith in our readers, so we assume that you are not sitting there unprotected.

Perhaps the most exciting products in this test are the ones new to the market. ISA Server, Microsoft's follow-up to their old Proxy Server, is naturally interesting because it uses Windows 2000 as its platform. Also of interest is our closer look at Firewall-1, which for this test was run on its most appropriate platform, Sun Solaris. (We ran it on Windows NT in our last test of firewalls.)

"The integration with Solaris is obviously seamless, because this firewall resisted all our attacks."

We also look at the runner-up in the previous test, Raptor. Raptor has been renamed VelociRaptor and runs on an elegant rack server from Cobalt, which uses Linux as its operating system, of course. The entire set-up would be right at home on the cover of any self-respecting gadget magazine. The winner of the previous test, Cisco Pix, is also in this issue.