Product review and beta sites wanted: AstroFlowGuard

Sat Aug 23 16:15:08 PDT 2003

On Sat, Aug 23, 2003 at 02:08:04PM -0400, J C Lawrence wrote:
> > Well, a firewall to me doesn't have all this other stuff - it
> > compromises it's features as a firewall, but I understand.
> 
> Quite.  Its a scaling question.  For the smaller setups integration
> makes some market and deployment sense.  Its not perfect, it suffers
> oversight, complexity and audit trail problems, but at those scales it
> makes sense.

yes, a consolidated box was actually requested from many of our
customers, web hosting and ASP in particular.
however, we did plan for larger company and enterprise use as well so
services can be broken up onto separate appliances and managed from the
same interface ;)

> > We like "HTML".  
> 
> There are a couple bits of the management controls which currently use
> VBScript in the same manner many sites use Javascript to make things
> like form behaviour a little more "friendly".  It is going to be fixed,
> and soon.  You (and others) have been heard.

argh. yes, this was certainly a lack of foresight that I'll admit too.
the move from VBScript (ugh) to Javascript is already in the works and
will be complete in about 4-5 weeks.

>   Note: It is precisely this sort of feedback (and much else) that Matt
>   was looking for.  Just me commenting on how popular iBooks are in
>   NOCs, or how much &feature; is needed is a little less convincing than
>   half a dozen or more people in the field coming up with , "We need..."
>   and "This won't work for us because..." statements.

actually, I did take your iBook remark seriously and passed it along but
yes, the more specific feedback and suggestions from real world
administrators we get, the better the product will be in the end.

> > I'll not mumble about running an IDS on a firewall and the issues of
> > Watching the watcher here.
> 
> True, and its a fair complaint were AFG aimed at a larger deployment
> case.

I agree. we're already talking to very large German ISP that feels
exactly the same way. they are going to use the all-in-one units in
their customer cabinets and are opting for separate, broken out
appliances to run the larger operation.

thanks for the feedback!
-matt

-- 
Matt Olander
Chief Technology Officer
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(408)943-4101 Fax
www.offmyserver.com
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