Firewalls

Protect business networks, users, applications, devices, and data with firewalls designed for small business, branch, campus, enterprise, data center, and distributed network environments. Hummingbird Networks offers business and enterprise firewall appliances with options for next-generation security, intrusion prevention, VPN connectivity, SD-WAN, application control, web filtering, malware protection, centralized management, and other advanced security capabilities.

A modern firewall can do considerably more than allow or block traffic between an internal network and the internet. Next-generation firewalls can inspect applications and network traffic, enforce security policies, detect threats, segment networks, secure remote connections, connect multiple locations, and provide administrators with greater visibility into activity crossing the network.

The right firewall should be selected according to real network traffic, security services, users, devices, VPN requirements, WAN connectivity, management preferences, licensing, redundancy requirements, and expected growth. Firewall performance can change significantly when advanced security inspection is enabled, making proper sizing an important part of the buying process.

Shop Business & Enterprise Firewalls

Firewalls control traffic moving between networks according to defined security policies. They are commonly positioned between an organization's internal network and external networks such as the internet, but firewalls can also be used between internal network segments, data centers, branches, cloud environments, and other security zones.

Depending on the firewall platform and security services enabled, capabilities can include:

• Stateful firewall inspection
• Next-generation firewall security
• Intrusion detection and prevention
• Application visibility and control
• Malware and threat protection
• Web and content filtering
• URL filtering
• VPN connectivity
• Secure remote access
• Network segmentation
• SD-WAN
• WAN failover
• Traffic shaping and QoS
• Centralized or cloud management
• Logging and reporting
• High availability

Available features vary by manufacturer, firewall model, software version, license, and security subscription.

What Is a Network Firewall?

A network firewall is a security system that monitors and controls traffic between networks according to established rules and policies.

At a basic level, a firewall can determine whether network connections should be permitted or blocked based on information such as source, destination, protocol, port, and connection state.

Modern business firewalls can go further by examining applications, users, content, threats, encrypted traffic, and other characteristics of network activity.

This makes the firewall an important policy enforcement point within a broader network security architecture.

Next-Generation Firewalls

A next-generation firewall, commonly abbreviated NGFW, combines traditional firewall functionality with additional security and network intelligence.

Depending on the platform, NGFW capabilities can include:

• Application identification and control
• Intrusion prevention
• Malware protection
• Threat intelligence
• Web filtering
• Identity-aware policies
• SSL/TLS inspection
• VPN services
• Network segmentation
• Centralized security management

These capabilities can allow organizations to create security policies based on more than IP addresses and ports.

For example, administrators may be able to identify particular applications or categories of traffic and apply different security policies based on the user, device, application, destination, or network segment involved.

Traditional Firewall vs. Next-Generation Firewall

Traditional stateful firewalls primarily evaluate network connections using information such as addresses, ports, protocols, and connection state.

Next-generation firewalls add deeper inspection and security capabilities designed to identify applications and detect threats within permitted traffic.

Organizations evaluating an NGFW should consider which advanced services they actually intend to enable because security inspection can affect firewall performance and licensing requirements.

Unified Threat Management Firewalls

Unified Threat Management, commonly called UTM, refers to combining multiple security capabilities into a single security platform or appliance.

A UTM firewall may combine firewalling with functions such as intrusion prevention, malware protection, web filtering, application control, VPN services, and other security technologies.

Consolidating security functions can simplify deployment and administration, particularly for small businesses, branch offices, and organizations with limited IT resources.

The terminology used by firewall manufacturers varies, and many capabilities historically associated with UTM are now included within broader next-generation firewall platforms.

Business Firewalls

Business firewalls protect network connectivity for offices, professional services organizations, retail locations, healthcare facilities, schools, warehouses, hospitality environments, and other commercial networks.

Compared with basic consumer routing equipment, business firewall platforms can provide greater security visibility, policy control, VPN capabilities, centralized management, segmentation, reporting, and support for multiple WAN connections.

A business firewall should be sized according to actual network requirements rather than office size alone.

A small organization transferring large files, using cloud applications, supporting many VPN users, or enabling extensive security inspection can require more firewall capacity than a larger organization with relatively light traffic.

Enterprise Firewalls

Enterprise firewalls are designed for larger or more demanding networks that require greater throughput, interface capacity, scalability, redundancy, security inspection, and management capabilities.

Enterprise deployments can include:

• Corporate headquarters
• Large campuses
• Data centers
• Healthcare organizations
• Universities
• Large distributed organizations
• Manufacturing environments
• High-bandwidth internet edges

Organizations evaluating enterprise firewalls should consider both current requirements and expected traffic growth over the intended lifecycle of the equipment.

Branch Office Firewalls

Branch office firewalls protect remote locations while connecting them to headquarters, data centers, cloud resources, internet services, and other branches.

Important branch firewall capabilities can include:

• Centralized management
• Site-to-site VPN
• SD-WAN
• Dual-WAN connectivity
• WAN failover
• Application control
• Threat protection
• Zero-touch or simplified deployment
• Remote troubleshooting

Centralized administration can be particularly valuable when an organization manages dozens or hundreds of sites without dedicated IT staff at each location.

Firewall Throughput

Firewall throughput measures how much network traffic a firewall can process under specified conditions.

It is an important specification, but the highest throughput number shown on a firewall specification sheet should not automatically be treated as the performance available with every security feature enabled.

Manufacturers can publish multiple performance measurements, including:

• Firewall throughput
• IPS throughput
• Threat protection throughput
• NGFW throughput
• VPN throughput
• SSL inspection performance

These measurements represent different workloads and test conditions.

When advanced security services are enabled, the firewall performs more inspection and processing. Organizations should therefore compare the performance measurement that most closely resembles the security configuration they expect to use.

How to Size a Firewall

Proper firewall sizing starts with the network workload rather than simply matching firewall throughput to the advertised speed of an internet connection.

Consider the following factors before choosing a firewall.

Internet & WAN Bandwidth

Determine current internet and WAN connection speeds and account for expected upgrades during the firewall's service life.

A firewall purchased for today's internet circuit can become a bottleneck after a future bandwidth upgrade.

Security Inspection

Determine which security services will be enabled, such as IPS, malware inspection, application control, web filtering, and SSL/TLS inspection.

Evaluate the firewall's performance with the relevant services enabled rather than relying exclusively on maximum stateful firewall throughput.

Users & Devices

Estimate the number of users and connected devices the firewall will support.

Remember that a single employee may use a laptop, smartphone, desk phone, tablet, and other network-connected devices. Servers, printers, cameras, IoT equipment, wireless infrastructure, and operational technology can add many more connections.

Concurrent Sessions

Firewalls maintain state information for active network connections. Busy networks and applications can generate large numbers of concurrent sessions.

Session capacity can therefore become important in environments with many users, devices, cloud applications, servers, or internet-facing services.

VPN Requirements

Consider the number of remote users, site-to-site tunnels, VPN traffic volume, encryption requirements, and expected VPN growth.

Interface Requirements

Determine the number and speed of WAN, LAN, DMZ, and other network interfaces required.

Higher-performance firewalls may support Gigabit Ethernet, multi-gigabit Ethernet, 10GbE, 25GbE, 40GbE, 100GbE, or other interfaces depending on the platform.

Future Growth

A firewall should provide reasonable capacity for expected increases in internet bandwidth, users, devices, applications, VPN traffic, and security inspection.

Buying with some performance headroom can reduce the risk of replacing the firewall prematurely.

Firewall Security Inspection

A firewall can permit a network connection while advanced security engines continue inspecting the traffic carried by that connection.

This deeper inspection is what allows modern security appliances to identify suspicious activity that traditional port-based filtering might not detect.

Security inspection can include application analysis, intrusion prevention, malware scanning, web filtering, encrypted traffic inspection, and other controls depending on the firewall platform.

Intrusion Prevention Systems

An Intrusion Prevention System, or IPS, analyzes network traffic for patterns associated with attacks, vulnerabilities, malicious behavior, and other security threats.

When suspicious traffic is detected, an IPS can take action according to the configured security policy.

IPS processing requires firewall resources, so organizations planning to use intrusion prevention should evaluate IPS or threat-protection performance when sizing an appliance.

Application Control

Application control allows compatible next-generation firewalls to identify network applications and apply security or traffic policies accordingly.

This can provide administrators with greater visibility than traditional policies based exclusively on TCP or UDP port numbers.

Depending on the platform, administrators may be able to allow, block, prioritize, limit, or monitor applications or categories of applications.

Web & URL Filtering

Web filtering can help organizations control access to websites based on categories, reputation, security policies, or other criteria.

Depending on the firewall platform and subscription, web security capabilities can help block malicious websites, phishing destinations, inappropriate content, and other unwanted web activity.

Organizations should review both the technical capabilities and licensing requirements for web filtering when comparing firewalls.

Malware & Threat Protection

Modern firewall security services can inspect network traffic for malicious files, known threats, suspicious behavior, and other indicators of compromise.

Threat protection can use signatures, reputation services, threat intelligence, sandboxing, cloud analysis, or other security technologies depending on the platform.

Because the threat landscape changes continuously, many advanced firewall security services rely on active subscriptions to receive updated intelligence and security content.

SSL & TLS Inspection

A large amount of modern internet traffic is encrypted using SSL/TLS. Encryption protects data in transit, but it can also prevent security systems from inspecting the contents of traffic unless appropriate decryption and inspection capabilities are used.

Compatible firewalls can perform SSL/TLS inspection according to organizational policies and technical requirements.

Encrypted traffic inspection can be resource intensive and can materially affect firewall performance, making it an important consideration during appliance sizing.

Organizations should also consider privacy, certificate management, application compatibility, and applicable policies when implementing encrypted traffic inspection.

Firewall VPN

Firewalls frequently provide VPN capabilities for securely connecting users and networks across untrusted networks such as the internet.

Two common VPN applications are remote-access VPN and site-to-site VPN.

Remote-Access VPN

Remote-access VPN allows authorized users to securely connect to organizational network resources from remote locations.

This can support employees working from home, traveling staff, administrators, contractors, and other authorized remote users.

When sizing a firewall for remote access, consider the number of simultaneous VPN users, expected bandwidth, authentication requirements, encryption, and the applications users will access.

Site-to-Site VPN

Site-to-site VPN connects separate networks across encrypted tunnels.

Organizations can use site-to-site VPN to connect headquarters, branches, data centers, cloud environments, and other locations.

Large distributed networks should consider the number of supported tunnels, aggregate VPN throughput, management architecture, redundancy, and routing requirements.

Firewalls & SD-WAN

Many modern firewall and security platforms also provide software-defined WAN capabilities.

SD-WAN can help organizations manage multiple WAN connections and make traffic-routing decisions based on application, policy, link availability, or performance.

Depending on the platform, SD-WAN capabilities can include:

• Multiple WAN links
• Automatic failover
• Application-aware routing
• Dynamic path selection
• Traffic prioritization
• Centralized branch management
• VPN connectivity between locations

Combining firewall and SD-WAN functions can simplify branch infrastructure by allowing one platform to handle both security and WAN connectivity.

Dual-WAN Firewalls

Dual-WAN firewalls can connect to more than one internet or WAN service.

This can provide redundancy if the primary connection fails and can support traffic distribution or policy-based routing depending on the firewall platform.

Organizations that depend heavily on cloud applications, VoIP, VPN connectivity, payment systems, or other internet-based services may benefit from redundant WAN connectivity.

Firewall High Availability

High availability can reduce dependence on a single firewall appliance.

Compatible firewall platforms can be deployed as redundant pairs or clusters so that another appliance can assume traffic-processing responsibilities if the active device becomes unavailable.

High availability should be considered for networks where a firewall failure would cause unacceptable interruption to internet access, VPN connectivity, applications, or business operations.

When planning firewall HA, organizations should consider:

• Supported HA architecture
• Licensing requirements
• State synchronization
• WAN redundancy
• Switching redundancy
• Power redundancy
• Physical rack placement

Network Segmentation with Firewalls

Firewalls can enforce security policies between internal network segments as well as between the internal network and internet.

Segmentation can separate systems based on function, security requirements, users, devices, applications, or trust level.

Organizations might separate:

• Employee networks
• Guest networks
• Servers
• Security cameras
• IoT devices
• Voice systems
• Point-of-sale equipment
• Operational technology
• Management networks

Segmentation can reduce unnecessary communication between systems and provide more granular control over how traffic moves through the organization.

Firewall vs. Router

Routers and firewalls can both forward traffic between networks, but their primary roles differ.

A router primarily connects networks and determines how traffic should reach its destination. A firewall primarily applies security policies to determine what traffic should be permitted and how it should be inspected.

Modern security appliances frequently include routing, NAT, VPN, SD-WAN, DHCP, and other network services, which can allow the firewall to perform both security and routing functions in some deployments.

Organizations with more complex WAN or routing requirements may still use dedicated routers and gateways alongside their firewalls.

Hardware Firewalls vs. Software & Virtual Firewalls

Firewall functionality can be deployed using dedicated physical appliances, virtual machines, cloud-native services, or other software-based architectures.

Hardware Firewall Appliances

Hardware firewalls provide dedicated physical network interfaces and computing resources for security processing.

They are widely used at business internet edges, branches, campuses, data centers, and other physical network locations.

Virtual Firewalls

Virtual firewalls run within compatible virtualization or cloud environments and can provide security controls without requiring a dedicated physical appliance at that location.

They can be useful for virtual data centers, cloud workloads, testing environments, and architectures where security must extend beyond physical network boundaries.

The right deployment model depends on the infrastructure being protected and the organization's operational requirements.

Cloud-Managed Firewalls

Cloud-managed firewalls allow administrators to configure, monitor, and troubleshoot compatible security appliances through a centralized cloud management platform.

This can be especially useful for organizations with distributed branches or limited IT resources at remote locations.

Depending on the platform, cloud management can provide:

• Centralized configuration
• Multi-site visibility
• Remote troubleshooting
• Policy templates
• Firmware management
• VPN administration
• Security monitoring
• Reporting

Organizations should evaluate licensing, internet dependency, administrative controls, logging, security capabilities, and lifecycle requirements when choosing a cloud-managed firewall platform.

Firewall Licensing & Security Subscriptions

Firewall hardware and firewall security services are not always purchased in the same way.

Depending on the manufacturer, advanced capabilities may require subscriptions, licenses, support contracts, or security service bundles.

Licensed services can include:

• Threat intelligence
• Intrusion prevention updates
• Malware protection
• Web filtering
• Application security
• DNS security
• Cloud management
• Support
• Firmware or software entitlements

Licensing should be evaluated at the same time as firewall hardware so that the purchased appliance provides the security and management capabilities required by the organization.

Firewall Interfaces & Connectivity

Firewall interfaces connect WAN services, internal networks, switches, servers, DMZs, and other network segments.

Depending on the model, firewall connectivity can include:

• Gigabit Ethernet RJ45
• Multi-gigabit Ethernet
• SFP
• SFP+
• 10 Gigabit Ethernet
• 25 Gigabit Ethernet
• 40 Gigabit Ethernet
• 100 Gigabit Ethernet

Organizations should verify both interface quantity and speed. A firewall with sufficient processing capacity can still create deployment problems if it lacks the physical interfaces required by the network design.

Fiber-connected firewall deployments may also require compatible transceiver modules.

Firewalls for Small Business

Small businesses need firewall security that matches their operational requirements without creating unnecessary administrative complexity.

Important considerations can include:

• Internet connection speed
• Number of users and devices
• Cloud application usage
• Guest WiFi
• VPN requirements
• Security subscriptions
• Ease of management
• WAN redundancy
• Future growth

A small-business firewall should still provide sufficient performance when the security services the organization intends to use are enabled.

Firewalls for Multi-Site Organizations

Organizations with many branches need to consider security consistency as well as individual firewall performance.

Centralized management can allow administrators to apply common policies, monitor remote appliances, establish VPN connectivity, deploy configuration changes, and troubleshoot sites without traveling to each location.

Multi-site firewall architectures can be useful for:

• Retail chains
• Healthcare organizations
• School systems
• Professional services firms
• Restaurant groups
• Distributed enterprises
• Warehouses and logistics networks

Firewalls for Data Centers

Data center firewalls can require substantially greater throughput, interface density, session capacity, redundancy, and security inspection performance than typical branch appliances.

Data center firewall selection should account for east-west and north-south traffic, server workloads, internet connectivity, application architecture, segmentation, encrypted traffic, availability requirements, and future capacity.

High-speed Ethernet interfaces and redundant hardware can become particularly important in these environments.

Firewalls for Retail

Retail firewalls can protect point-of-sale systems, employee networks, guest WiFi, inventory systems, cameras, IoT devices, and connections to cloud or corporate applications.

Organizations operating many stores can benefit from centralized security management, standardized policies, VPN or SD-WAN connectivity, and simplified remote deployment.

Firewalls for Healthcare

Healthcare networks can contain clinical systems, workstations, medical devices, voice services, guest networks, servers, cloud applications, and other systems with different security requirements.

Firewall segmentation, secure remote access, threat protection, logging, availability, and centralized policy management can all be important components of healthcare network security.

Firewalls for Education

Schools and universities can have large numbers of users and devices accessing internet, cloud, instructional, and administrative resources.

Education firewall requirements can include high throughput, web filtering, application visibility, segmentation, VPN connectivity, threat protection, and support for large numbers of simultaneous network sessions.

Firewalls for Industrial & Manufacturing Networks

Manufacturing and industrial environments can combine traditional IT systems with operational technology, industrial devices, automation, cameras, sensors, and other connected equipment.

Firewalls can help segment these systems and control traffic between security zones.

Industrial organizations should consider uptime, network segmentation, remote access, application requirements, equipment lifecycle, and operational dependencies when selecting security infrastructure.

Fortinet FortiGate Firewalls

Fortinet FortiGate provides next-generation firewall and security capabilities across a broad range of appliance sizes for small business, branch, campus, enterprise, and data center environments.

Depending on the FortiGate model and security services, capabilities can include firewalling, intrusion prevention, application control, web filtering, VPN, SD-WAN, malware protection, network segmentation, and centralized security management.

FortiGate appliances are available across a wide range of performance and interface requirements, allowing organizations to deploy the platform from smaller remote locations through high-capacity enterprise environments.

FortiWiFi Firewalls

Fortinet FortiWiFi appliances combine compatible FortiGate security capabilities with integrated wireless functionality in selected models.

These appliances can be useful in smaller branches and other environments where consolidating security, routing, and wireless capabilities into a compact platform is appropriate.

Organizations should evaluate wireless requirements independently when deciding between an integrated FortiWiFi appliance and a firewall combined with dedicated wireless access points.

Cisco Meraki MX Security Appliances

Cisco Meraki security appliances combine firewall, VPN, SD-WAN, WAN management, and security capabilities with centralized cloud management.

The Meraki architecture can be particularly useful for organizations managing distributed locations because compatible appliances can be administered through the Meraki cloud management environment.

Depending on the appliance and licensing, capabilities can include application-aware firewall policies, site-to-site VPN, WAN failover, traffic management, intrusion prevention, content filtering, malware protection, and other security services.

Meraki licensing is an important part of the firewall purchase because available security and management capabilities depend on the selected appliance and license edition.

Sophos Firewalls

Sophos provides firewall and broader cybersecurity technologies for business environments.

Sophos Firewall platforms can provide network security, threat protection, VPN, application control, web security, segmentation, and centralized management capabilities depending on the appliance, software, and subscriptions selected.

Organizations already using Sophos endpoint or other Sophos security technologies may also evaluate how firewall security fits into the broader security ecosystem.

Cisco Firewalls & Security Solutions

Cisco provides security technologies for branch, campus, enterprise, data center, cloud, and remote-access environments.

Available Cisco security architectures can address firewalling, secure connectivity, threat protection, segmentation, identity, and other network security requirements depending on the platform.

When selecting a Cisco security solution, organizations should evaluate the specific hardware or virtual platform, management architecture, licensing, security services, throughput, and interface requirements.

How to Compare Firewalls

Comparing firewall models only by maximum throughput can produce misleading results. A more useful comparison considers the complete deployment.

Compare:

• Firewall throughput
• NGFW or threat protection throughput
• IPS performance
• Encrypted traffic inspection requirements
• VPN throughput
• Concurrent sessions
• New sessions per second
• Interface speeds and quantities
• WAN redundancy
• High availability
• Security services
• Management architecture
• Logging and reporting
• Licensing and subscriptions
• Support
• Expected growth

The goal is to select a firewall that provides the security functions and network performance required under realistic operating conditions.

Build a Complete Secure Network

The firewall is one component of a secure network architecture. Depending on the deployment, organizations may also require:

• Managed network switches
• Routers and WAN infrastructure
• Wireless access points
• Network segmentation
• Endpoint protection
• Identity and authentication services
• Secure remote access
• Network monitoring
• Transceivers and cabling
• UPS and backup power
• Racks and physical infrastructure

A firewall should be selected as part of the overall network architecture rather than treated as an isolated appliance.

Why Buy Firewalls from Hummingbird Networks?

Selecting a firewall requires balancing security, performance, connectivity, licensing, management, redundancy, and budget.

Hummingbird Networks helps businesses and organizations source firewall appliances and network security infrastructure for new deployments, replacements, branch rollouts, infrastructure upgrades, and security refreshes.

Customers can turn to our team for:

• Business and enterprise firewall appliances
• Next-generation firewalls
• Branch security appliances
• High-performance enterprise security platforms
• VPN and SD-WAN appliances
• Firewall licensing and subscriptions
• Network security infrastructure
• Product selection and compatibility assistance

Whether you are replacing an aging firewall, securing a new location, upgrading internet bandwidth, building a multi-site VPN, deploying SD-WAN, or improving network segmentation, Hummingbird Networks can help you evaluate firewall solutions based on your network and security requirements.

Frequently Asked Questions About Firewalls

What does a firewall do?

A firewall monitors and controls network traffic according to security policies. Modern firewalls can also provide capabilities such as intrusion prevention, application control, malware protection, web filtering, VPN connectivity, segmentation, and threat detection depending on the platform and licensing.

What is a next-generation firewall?

A next-generation firewall combines traditional stateful firewalling with additional security capabilities such as application visibility, intrusion prevention, threat protection, identity-aware policies, and deeper traffic inspection.

What is the difference between a firewall and an NGFW?

A traditional firewall primarily controls traffic using network information such as IP addresses, ports, protocols, and connection state. An NGFW adds application awareness and additional threat-detection and inspection capabilities.

What is a UTM firewall?

UTM stands for Unified Threat Management. A UTM firewall combines multiple security functions such as firewalling, IPS, malware protection, web filtering, application control, and VPN services into one platform.

What size firewall does my business need?

Firewall sizing depends on internet and WAN bandwidth, security inspection, users, devices, concurrent sessions, VPN traffic, interfaces, applications, and expected growth. The appropriate model should be sized using the performance metrics that reflect the security services you plan to enable.

Is firewall throughput the same as internet speed?

No. Firewall throughput describes the appliance's traffic-processing capability under specified test conditions. Advanced security inspection can reduce available throughput, so a firewall should not be selected by comparing only its maximum firewall rating with the internet connection speed.

Why is threat protection throughput lower than firewall throughput?

Threat protection requires additional processing because the firewall performs deeper inspection of network traffic. This can include IPS, application inspection, malware detection, web filtering, and other security functions.

Can a firewall slow down my internet connection?

Yes. An undersized firewall can become a bottleneck if traffic exceeds the appliance's processing capacity, particularly when advanced security inspection is enabled. Proper sizing helps ensure the firewall can support the required network performance.

What is IPS on a firewall?

IPS stands for Intrusion Prevention System. It analyzes network traffic for known attack patterns, vulnerabilities, and suspicious behavior and can take action according to configured security policies.

What is SSL inspection?

SSL/TLS inspection allows a compatible firewall to inspect certain encrypted traffic according to organizational security policies. Because decryption and inspection require additional processing, SSL inspection can significantly affect firewall performance.

Can a firewall provide VPN access?

Yes. Many business firewalls support remote-access VPN, site-to-site VPN, or both. VPN capabilities, supported protocols, throughput, user capacity, and licensing vary by firewall platform.

Can a firewall connect multiple offices?

Yes. Site-to-site VPN and SD-WAN technologies can connect branches, headquarters, data centers, and other locations through secure network links.

What is SD-WAN on a firewall?

SD-WAN uses software-defined policies to manage WAN connections and traffic paths. Depending on the firewall platform, it can provide WAN failover, application-aware routing, dynamic path selection, traffic prioritization, and centralized management.

Do I need two firewalls for high availability?

High-availability firewall architectures commonly use multiple compatible appliances so another firewall can continue processing traffic if one device becomes unavailable. Exact HA requirements vary by platform, licensing, network design, and availability objectives.

Does a firewall replace antivirus or endpoint security?

No. Firewall and endpoint security address different parts of the security architecture. Network firewalls inspect and control network traffic, while endpoint protection operates directly on computers and other supported devices. Organizations commonly use both as complementary security layers.

Does a firewall replace a router?

Sometimes. Many firewall appliances provide routing, NAT, DHCP, VPN, and WAN capabilities and can act as the network edge device. More complex environments may use dedicated routers alongside firewalls.

Does a firewall require a subscription?

It depends on the platform. Basic firewall functions may differ from advanced security and management services that require active licenses or subscriptions. Threat intelligence, IPS updates, web filtering, malware protection, cloud management, and support are examples of services that may require licensing.

What happens if a firewall security subscription expires?

The effect depends on the manufacturer, platform, and license. Certain security updates, cloud services, support, or advanced features may stop or become limited while other firewall functions may continue. Organizations should understand renewal requirements before selecting a firewall platform.

How often should a business firewall be replaced?

There is no universal replacement interval. A firewall should be evaluated when it can no longer support required throughput, security services, software updates, interfaces, licensing, vendor support, or organizational requirements. Internet bandwidth upgrades and network growth can also create a need for replacement.

Which firewall brand should I choose?

No single firewall brand is appropriate for every organization. The right platform depends on security requirements, network size, throughput, management preferences, existing infrastructure, VPN and SD-WAN needs, licensing model, support requirements, and budget.

What should I know before buying a firewall?

Know your internet and WAN speeds, expected users and devices, required security services, VPN requirements, interface needs, management preferences, high-availability requirements, licensing expectations, and anticipated growth. These factors make it easier to compare firewall models accurately.

Can Hummingbird Networks help me choose a firewall?

Yes. Hummingbird Networks can help businesses and organizations evaluate firewall appliances based on bandwidth, security inspection, users, devices, VPN requirements, interfaces, management, licensing, redundancy, and future network growth.

Shop Firewalls for Business & Enterprise Networks

Protect business networks with firewall appliances designed for secure internet access, threat protection, VPN connectivity, network segmentation, SD-WAN, branch security, and enterprise network environments.

Whether you need a firewall for a small office, distributed branch network, campus, data center, high-bandwidth internet connection, or enterprise security architecture, Hummingbird Networks can help you identify firewall hardware, licensing, and security services that fit your infrastructure requirements.