Product review and beta sites wanted: AstroFlowGuard

Thu Aug 21 13:08:21 PDT 2003

Quoting Matt Olander (matt at offmyserver.com):
> Hi,
Hi.

> The basic feature list of the AstroFlowGuard is:
>   Linux based 1U rackmount appliance with simple LCD-panel based initial
>   configuration.
Neat.

>   Intended as more featured firewall and network management and
>   monitoring station for small to medium sized sites.  Capable of
Well, a firewall to me doesn't have all this other stuff - it compromises
it's features as a firewall, but I understand.

>   Browser based UI (currently only IE but soon to be any browser
>   compatible) for all features.

We like "HTML".   HTML is what made the web take off.  MS-HTML is
bad.  I get sort of pedantic about actually generating proper HTML.
I validate it with validator.w3.org (actually I use iCab on a Mac
which has an HTML 3.2 and HTML 4.0 validator built in).

Notes failed in many respects as an information repository
because it was proprietary.  I remember ATT annoucing a huge
Notes data repository for intercompany information sharing.
It was a room the size of a large gymnasium.  I saw it as they
were bringing it down, 18 months after announcing it, to use
the space and rack sfor ATT Worldmail.  Why did it fail?
Notes is proprietary.  The WorldWide Web slammed it to the ground.

The WWW took off because it was based on fairly simple, OPEN
STANDARDS.  http transfered the data, HTML was used to render it
on the screen.  It didn't matter if the server was OS/2, a Microsoft,
Unix, Mac or VMS.  It didn't matter if the client was Mac, PC,
Unix, whatever.

Open Standards meant I can use Opera, Mozilla, IE, iCab, w3m, lynx,
Safari, Konqueror, www, Netscape, or several other clients to read
a Web Site.

That said, lots of sites look like crap because, well, they don't
use HTML.  They use stuff that looks like HTML, but doesn't render
EXCEPT IN INTERNET EXPLORER.

I don't live in a Windows world.  I've neither rebooted nor updated
my OS in the last month 3 times to stop REALLY NASTY and crippling
security problems.

My web page has a note, a bit sarcastic:
     "This page best viewed with a computer"

In short, I REALLY encourage you to ensure that you're box is making
real HTML.  We don't tolerate "close to" SMTP or "almost TCP/IP" to 
get mail and other traffic around.  I don't have much patience with
tools that say "Oh, you need to use Internet Explorer".

If they say that, then it's not usable by open systems.  You might
as well write a more effiecient proprietary controller that just runs
on Windows.  You can keep a TCP session open to your box and not worry
about the inefficiencies of HTTP and short lived, hard to authenticate
sessions.

I'll not mumble about running an IDS on a firewall and the issues
of Watching the watcher here.