Goodbye software firewall on your desktop PC

[Brian Kelsay]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/05/11/nvidia_nforce_update/

Quote from story:
The new chipset, the nForce 2 Ultra 400Gb, now features its own, on-board Gigabit Ethernet port, 
which Nvidia claims yields 200 per cent more network bandwidth than a Gigabit board hooked up to a 
PCI bus can manage.

Nvidia's big pitch, however, is the security component, which is claims is "the industry's first 
and only hardware-optimised firewall solution". Nvidia Firewall software hooks into the chipset's 
TCP/IP packet processing ability, and has been certified by security specialist ICSA Labs, the 
company said. Incoming packets can be analysed 'at source' to check whether they should be allowed 
into the computer. That, argues Nvidia, not only improves performance - the host CPU is freed from 
the task of running a software-only firewall - but enhances the degree of protection offered.

Brian Kelsay