Yoggie Pico

April 29, 2008 2:14 AM

Will this cute little firewall device work well with a small Server 2003 domain setup?

Found via the always-fun Gadget Show.

posted by chuckdarwin to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

That looks like a 'travel firewall'. Wouldn't you want a proper, suitable hardware firewall for a server?
posted by dance at 3:51 AM on April 29, 2008

Probably, dance... but I kind of like the idea of such a small one that runs Linux.
posted by chuckdarwin at 5:06 AM on April 29, 2008

You should be really running a firewall at the network gateway level, not on a usb stick. If you're really excited about using linux, then run it there.
posted by arnold at 6:03 AM on April 29, 2008

That looks like a pretty clever device, but it's not much of a firewall. Looking at the description it seems like untrusted, unfiltered packets will still hit the machine, get passed through the NIC driver, into memory (gah!), to the gadget driver, and across the USB driver before ever being filtered. The general reputation of Windows driver quality combined with this makes me think this isn't a suitable device for production use.

If you were faced with a choice between no firewalling whatsoever and this thing, it might make sense. But considering you could press $50 worth of WRT54G (also fairly small, also running Linux) into service as a firewall and NAT router for an entire small network, I don't see what use there would be for hanging the Pico off a server and presumably leaving the rest of the network to fend for itself.
posted by majick at 6:14 AM on April 29, 2008