Zyxels latest ZyWall Internet Security Gateway appliances are well-suited to tackle broadband sharing for the home office as well as small companies with built-in firewall and VPN capabilities.
I looked at the $299 ZyWall 1 appliance for one to five home users and the higher-performance ZyWall 100, priced at $1,799 and targeted at small companies. Both appliances shipped last month.
ZyWall products have a comprehensive set of features, including a built-in firewall, a VPN and content filtering. (The ZyWall 100 supports more VPN tunnels and has a DMZ port and more features.)
The firewall provides stateful packet inspection with access control lists and also denial-of-service attack protection, a much better alternative to just running NAT on other gateway appliances.
The ZyWall is the first Internet gateway appliance Ive seen that offers content filtering, providing a means for IT managers to prevent users from accessing offensive material. The product can filter based on URL keywords and on Web features such as Java, ActiveX and cookies.
More information is at www.zywall.com.