"And let’s face it, a firewall isn’t something you can choose to use anymore; a firewall is your first line of defense, and a critical one at that.
"So where is the appeal of creating your own firewall system? Take a look at some of the many extra features available in a do-it-yourself firewall. While such a firewall system would be self-contained, require a fair amount of storage, run on over-powered hardware, and consume more electricity than a simple appliance, the benefits still far outweigh the drawbacks.
"For one, there is a higher degree of reliability. Running on a full computer system makes it infinitely upgradeable. It can be extended to do more than just shuffle packets back and forth. You can turn a simple firewall into a full intrusion detection system. You can analyze and track bandwidth usage. It can be a VPN end point, a Web proxy, DHCP and DNS server, load balancer, handle automatic failover, and provide great diagnostic tools."
