FIREWALL ARCHITECTURE

Firewall Architecture

Firewall Architecture

Aims and Objectives

The major aim of this research proposal is to briefly analyze the concept and importance of firewall architecture in the modern business organizations. In this research paper we are going assist the organizations for creating a much better understanding of the capabilities which are possessed by firewall technologies. This research proposal will provide the information regarding several firewall architectures that are currently available. Through this research paper it would become easier for the organizations to decide what firewall architecture is suitable for their organization. This research paper is intended towards the audiences that have primary information of information technology, the personnel's such as; network administrators, and system engineers, along with other people who are responsible for designing the firewall architectures of the organization.

Introduction

A firewall is a device that works as a firewall between networks, allowing or denying transmissions from one network to the other. A typical use is to place it between a local network and the Internet, as a safety device to prevent intruders from accessing confidential information. A firewall is simply a filter that controls all communications passing from one network to the other and depending on what you are allowed or denied its path. To allow or deny communication firewall examines the type of service such as the web, email or IRC (Markham, & Payne, 2001, pp. 279-286).

This can enable a firewall from a local network to Internet web services, mail and ftp, but not IRC that may be unnecessary for our work. We can also configure the access to be made from the Internet to the local network and can deny them all or allow some services like the web, (if we have a web server and want accessible from the Internet). Depending on the firewall that we can also allow some access to the local network from the Internet if the user has been authenticated as a user on the local network. A firewall can be a hardware device or software, that is, a machine that is connected between the cable network and Internet connection, or a program that is installed on the machine with the modem that connects to the Internet. We can even find computers very powerful computers with specific software that all they do is monitor communications between networks (Cheswick et.al, 2003, pp.4-9).

Typically, firewalls operate on a UNIX platform - more often it BSDI, SunOS, AIX, IRIX, etc., rarely DOS, VMS, WNT, and Windows NT. Of hardware platforms meet INTEL, Sun SPARC, RS6000, Alpha, HP PA-RISC, a family of RISC processors R4400-R5000. In addition to Ethernet, many firewalls support FDDI, Token Ring, 100Base-T, 100VG-AnyLan, different serial devices. Memory requirements and the volume of the hard drive depends on the number of machines in the protected network segment, but more often it is recommended to have at least 32 MB of RAM and 500 MB of hard disk space (Garfinkel et.al, 2003, pp.34-56).

Usually, the operating system, running on the firewall is amended, the purpose of which ...