help with choosing a hardware firewall

ok, first i dont know a whole lot about firewall appliances but i am wanting to get a really good firewall on a budget. was looking at the cisco ISA550 but thats way to pricey for what im looking for was hopeing to spend less then 150 dollars if this is at all avalable. either refurbished or new. i have a very basic access point so as far as weather it be wired or wireless aint a primary concern snd im not concerned with local traffic just incomming traffic from the web and vpn is not a huge deal either although probably all strong firewalls are going to have this anyway. does anyone make a product like this on a low budget?

id like for it to work pretty well outside the box with minimum hassle and it dont need to support but a few users with a speed of about 30mb's 50would be a plus but not nessicary

 

As long as you aren't running a site with huge traffic, you can run one of the main firewalls based on BSD or Unix: http://distrowatch.com/search.php?category=Firewall#distrosearch

Even Cisco Adaptive Security Appliance (ASA) uses a Linux kernel, so there's no absolute need for a proprietary hardware device.

 

We run a Cisco ASA FW at work. We actually had one fail on us and during the interim we ran Untangle on a dedicated box.

I would pick something with 4Gbs of RAM, atleast an i3 CPU, and just run a desktop without a screen and RDP into it for configurations.

 

http://www.zyxelguard.com/

.

 

yea i dont have a spare pc laying around, and iv looked at zywall USG series seems only he USG50 and up have intrusion previon and detection. that even used with a subscription would top out close to 300 wich is well beyond my budget right now. id really like something like the cisco RVS4000 i had only its end of life so they dont update the signatures or anything for it the one i had died.

iv been looking around and i cant seem to find like a cisco ISA550 that is refurbished or any other refurbished UTM device like it. im thinking maybe a company i dont know about has somthin but who or where.

also i have found a D-link DSR250 wich is the right price but i posted in forums around and cant find any reviews or anything i dont know if its any good or not. i emailed company but am still looking for suggestions

 

Newegg has this for sale for $212 US. Has rave reviews over there.

 

If you run one of these hardware firewalls, is there still a need to run a AV on your system? or just OD scanners?

 

Yes. Firewalls cant possibly block all ports that malware uses. As long as port 80 is open and you use the net there will be a need for AV's.