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AnandTech Hardware Upgrade - four is better than two

 by Jason Clark on August 22, 2004 12:05 AM EST
29 Comments | Add A Comment
29 Comments

Firewall

For the past few years, we've had our Windows 2000 servers sitting on the public internet. Most people would think that we're crazy, and we probably were! But, over those few years, we were only hit with 1 vulnerability (SQL Slammer). The main reasons for not implementing a firewall were cost and implementation time. With Anand in school and I, running FuseTalk, finding the time to implement was a challenge. So, after 4-5 years of hanging our network out there, we decided to protect the network with a firewall.

We spent a few weeks researching and pricing the various solutions for a network of our size. In the end, we chose a Netscreen 25 from Netscreen Technologies (recently acquired by Juniper Networks). The Netscreen 25 met our current needs with room to grow. The first thing that we had to look at was sessions, as most of the products out there are based on the number of simultaneous sessions that they will serve. The Netscreen 25 serves 16,000 simultaneous sessions and 4,000 new sessions per second. We serve anywhere from 3000 to 6000 simultaneous sessions, depending on the day. Throughput is probably secondary, since most of the firewalls in this range will handle more throughput than required. The Netscreen 25 is no exception, as it handles 100Mbit/sec of firewall throughput; we burst at 41Mbit/sec, depending on the day.




Conclusion

Overall, the upgrade went quite well. There were no major issues at all (unlike some of our previous upgrades). There was about a 3-hour outage while the work was being done, and a slight slowdown while we forced 100MB Full duplex on the Netscreen, as the Cisco 2948L3 that we use requires 100MB Full duplex to be forced or it starts to produce frame errors all over the place. Our next major change is upgrading the forums to the new FuseTalk .NET forum software, since we've had a few "issues" with ColdFusion under load on the forums recently. On the hardware side of things, we'll probably start looking at 64bit once the Windows 64bit platform is released. For now, we have a lot of headroom and a stable, secure and robust infrastructure.

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  • ariafrost - Sunday, August 22, 2004 - link

    Impressive upgrades :) Nice work, AT! BTW, I'm going to have to be a spelling nazi and recommend that "NOC factility" be corrected to "NOC facility" on the home page...

  • Ecmaster76 - Sunday, August 22, 2004 - link

    #1 Just a guess, but that could be a memory expansion slot for the raid controller or some other integrated device.

  • sprockkets - Sunday, August 22, 2004 - link

    Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition? Isn't that alone cost thousands of dollars? Is it 64 bit, or more importantly, can it support 8GB on a 32 bit mode processor?

    Around $3700 time four for processors, around what $1000 for the board, $300 time 8 for the hdds, around what $100 ? for the raid controller, $1800 for Windows Server 2003 with 25 CALs, around $250 times 8 for PC3200 1GB ECC Registered ram sticks, assuming $300 for other stuff, that's what close to $20,000 HOLY $$$$ and that's not including the firewall and other stuff!!!

    How much did it cost you, really?

  • Reflex - Sunday, August 22, 2004 - link

    #2: A lot. This is the type of equipment you install in a temperature controlled server room, not a bedroom. It is not designed with heat or noise as primary concerns. Reliabilty is the number one issue, the number two is performance. Chances are it sounds similiar to a jet taking off but at a bit lower a level, I have a Compaq Proliant Xeon quad proc system at my house just for messing around and WOW is it loud.

  • Jeff7181 - Sunday, August 22, 2004 - link

    I love these articles... too bad we probably won't see one for quite some time now that you've got all this brand new stuff :)

  • skunkbuster - Sunday, August 22, 2004 - link

    i'm curious how much heat and noise does all of this produce?

  • Chuckles - Sunday, August 22, 2004 - link

    In this picture;
    http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/it/behindscene...
    (Page 1 top image)
    The forward right RAM bank appears to have an extra slot just forward of the main bank. Given its slot configuration it kinda looks like a 168-pin SDRAM slot. What is it, and what is its purpose?

  • gmailsupport - Monday, March 19, 2018 - link

    Firewall is just like a wall which protects your PC from external useless things. You can restrict the website if you want to not to open on your PC. Hardware and Software firewall do same work but in a different manner. I also have a website which provides <a href=" https://mailhelp.net/"> Amazon Webmail Support </a> to solve your email related problems.

  • gmailsupport - Monday, March 19, 2018 - link

    Firewall is just like a wall which protects your PC from external useless things. You can restrict the website if you want to not to open on your PC. Hardware and Software firewall do same work but in a different manner. I also have a website which provides Amazon Webmail Support to solve your email related problems.
    https://mailhelp.net/
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