Small Business firewall

[ffltstn]

My wife does the books for a small business (owns a hotel) out of our house. One server, one computer, backed up to a extenal harddrive and off site. She has a sonicwall tz170 that was first set up at an office that had 8 to 10 computers. Her computer support people are saying sonicwall no longer supports the TZ170, and she needs to up grade along with a new contract for them to monitor it. 1. Is the TZ170 different than a regular router? 2. Does she need it ontop of our DSL router and software firewall? 3. If she needs one is this something than can be bought and set up by us, does it need to be monitored? I know enough to build my own computers and keep them running.
Thanks,
Ken

 

[bill001g]

Depends what you are using the firewall for. If you have no VPN and you have no incoming connection ...ie someone accessing your computers from the internet it is likely you do not need a firewall.

Just NAT with no port forwarding makes it almost impossible for a external hacker to even locate your machine. Most other things are protected by software firewall on the machine itself.

The time you really need a firewall is if you have a server exposed to the internet. A true firewall can detect attacks on the server. Again if you have no serve then the attacks will never even get past the NAT because the router was not told to send them to the server

The only other thing that many companies do with a firewall is prevent internal users from using the internet for things they don't want like surfing porn. In this case you need a firewall as well as the subscription to the filer lists.

 

[ffltstn]

Depends what you are using the firewall for. If you have no VPN and you have no incoming connection ...ie someone accessing your computers from the internet it is likely you do not need a firewall.

Just NAT with no port forwarding makes it almost impossible for a external hacker to even locate your machine. Most other things are protected by software firewall on the machine itself.

The time you really need a firewall is if you have a server exposed to the internet. A true firewall can detect attacks on the server. Again if you have no serve then the attacks will never even get past the NAT because the router was not told to send them to the server

The only other thing that many companies do with a firewall is prevent internal users from using the internet for things they don't want like surfing porn. In this case you need a firewall as well as the subscription to the filer lists.

OK, so it sounds like she doesn't need it at all. Only time she accessed her computer is thru logmein once in a while, and never accesses the server from outside the house. So it seams that her firewall is just a router that connects the 2 computers which is then conected to out dsl router. Would it benefit use to purchase a firewall and use it? continue using the current one til it quits oe just connect her computers to our home network? I have to be able to explain to her why she needs to save $1000.
Thanks again
Ken

 

[bill001g]

I would continue to use the one you have until it fails. Just because a firewall is not supported does not mean it will not run for many years. There are cisco routers that are 15 years old that work perfectly fine even though cisco dropped support many years ago...but of course they are slow slow slow.

If the firewall were to fail I would just remove it. At best it sound like it is providing protection from your home network accessing this other network. Unless you have hackers in your house it most likely provide little benefit.