Home Automation - Firewalls

["Mark McCall" <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

As broadband nears a reality I'm continuing to look into security for my
home network. I have done a little reading and this is my (simplistic)
understanding so far.

1. I need a firewall
At this stage I plan to buy a router/firewall box

2. Anything "Public facing" should go on the De-militarised Zone
(DMZ)
Whilst I have nothing that needs to be open to the public I will need
access
to some things from the outside like my CCTV server, TiVo, Comfort etc. 
I'm
unsure whether those systems need to be on the DMZ or not?

I've read that the DMZ interface should really be a separate interface (in
the case of a PC acting as a router that would be a 2nd NIC).  Does this
mean that a hardware router/firewall isn't as secure?  I've also read the
term Virtual LANs (VLANs), supported by the Vigors for example, which seems
to have some security advantages?

I have placed my broadband order with Eclipse and have applied for a batch
of static IPs which I hope to assign to some of the various boxes mentioned
above as well as possibly running my own email server.  How do I got about
this?

As you can see I have lots of thoughts going round in my head (some of them
doubtlessly wrong).  I need someone with experience of this to tell me the
right way to go about all this.

In fact, as this will doubtless be of interest to lots of people now, and
in
the future, I'd like to put all the info on a page for the website.

All help / comments appreciated.

Thanks

M.




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