TABLE OF CONTENTS Our first ISA Server book, Configuring ISA Server 2000: Building Firewalls for Windows 2000 (Syngress Publishing), addressed Microsoft s first attempt at producing an enterprise-level network firewall product. As with most first attempts, ISA 2000 was in many ways a learning experience both for Microsoft and for those of us who used and managed it.
With ISA 2000, Microsoft provided full-fledged, multilayered firewall functionality that went far beyond the traditional packet filtering firewall, with extras such as intrusion detection and prevention (IDS/IDP) and Web caching features that many other firewall vendors either don t include at all or offer as add-on modules or separate products at extra cost.
Inevitably, ISA was compared with other popular firewall products such as CheckPoint s Firewall-1/VPN-1 and Cisco s PIX, along with the plethora of low-cost security appliances from vendors such as NetScreen, Watchguard, SonicWall, Symantec, and many others that have flooded the market over the last few years. Although it proved to be a strong competitor, ISA administrators quickly started compiling wish lists of features and functionalities that could make ISA even better.
| Note | Some might argue that customer wish lists have even, in some cases, resulted in the inclusion of features that are unnecessary or worse, as well as the elimination of desirable features. According to the product team, features such as the H.323 gateway included in ISA 2000 were dropped from ISA 2004 due to lack of customer interest. On the other hand,... |
