I have now recieved both of my hardware firewalls. Just on a side note, they came in monumentally huge boxes, which were packed full of either paper shreddings or those polystyrene packaging “peanuts”, I later found out they’re called.

I have recieved my serial cable for the WatchGuard and am planning to run m0n0wall on it. I have found out that it is possible, so that should be useful. It all boots up fine, albeit the CPU fan is rather loud. I have temporarily unplugged it, but when it is running properly then it is obviously paramount to have sufficient ventilation, so I’ll plug it back in. Here’s a picture of the device;

Now onto my next firewall, the NetScreen. It too powers up fine, but it has no fans, hence its really quiet. I am waiting for my serial cable to arrive in the post so I can do a factory reset on the device because it cannot currently be seen on the network. Once it works, I shall be using it as my main firewall. The ‘untrused’ port will be a RJ45 cable directly from the router via the upstairs-downstairs link, then ‘DMZ’ will go to a switch which will connect the servers and the ‘trusted’ port will connect to another switch which connects to the wireless access point and other wired machines. Here is a picture of it;

I will update you again when I have had the opportunity to use them both properly.