Benefits of Firewall

1.

Internet security can be monitored and alarms generated.

2.

Network Address Translator (NAT) alleviates IP address shortage.

3.

Audit and log Internet Usage. Useful for justifying expense, identifying bottlenecks.

4.

Central point of contact (email, www and ftp). Converse: single point of failure?

5.

Caching WWW proxy servers (squid). Ideal for low bandwidth WAN connections esp. in India!