What do you guys use? Any of those high tech expensive gizmos in webhosting magazinet? Just a router?

Security should first begin at the server, if you have a large farm of servers which all will utilize the same ports etc, then a hardware based firewall can come in handy, any type of a good firewall, will run you 5k - 20k.

The best hardware based firewall in my opinion is the cisco pix, but its closer to the 20k range

which is the cheap and best firewall?
How is checkpoint?

I would say that PIX is rather limited and I prefer a stand alone hardware product that is separate for the router.

The Nokia/Checkpoint is rather good, but we like the Netscreen line of products. They are very effective, easy to use and rather inexpensive.

Hope that helps!

Anybody have any thoughts on using Microsoft's ISA Server as a firewall? Talk about cheap, a friend put one up for his servers and it ran him way under 3 grand.

Don't know if I trust Redmond to code anything that performs well under load though (or is secure for that matter) ;)

We have 2 customers (and a friend) who used ISA for about 3-5 months. They hated it! The documentation are poor, it is counter-intuitive to setup, has strange quarks to it and needs a lot of up keep. All have moved to a dedicated hardware based solutions (one to Nokia CheckPoint and the others to Netscreen) and all are glad they made the change.

I was very excited with ISA came out, but think it has a little while before it matures. :(