firewalls

Overheard: NBAR is a powerful application-layer firewall

NBAR is a very powerful application-layer firewall that you may already have installed on your Cisco router. While traditional firewalls can only recognize traffic based on IOS Layers 3 or 4, Cisco’s NBAR can go all the way to Layer 7. David Davis, What can Cisco’s Network-Based Application Recognition (NBAR) do for you?

Overheard: The Great Firewall of China

Depending on how you look at it, the Chinese government’s attempt to rein in the Internet is crude and slapdash or ingenious and well crafted. John Ritter, The Connection Has Been Reset

When American technologists write about the control system, they tend to emphasize its limits. When Chinese citizens discuss it—at least with me—they tend to emphasize its strength. All of them are right, which makes the government’s approach to the Internet a nice proxy for its larger attempt to control people’s daily lives.