Broadband Router/Firewall

[Stephen Lee <sl@example.com>]

Hi all,

I got my Yahoo! BB ADSL connection last week, and is considering getting
a broadband router.  Upon some research I found that there are basically
two price ranges: the more expensive ones with "Stateful Inspection"
firewalls, and the cheap ones with just packet filtering (or none at all).

Also, the ones that comes out pre-Usen/Yahoo! have lower throughput
(designed just for Flet's ADSL's 1.5Mbps downlink).

I am thinking of getting the more expensive type, but would like to get
some opinions.

1. Is Stateful Inspection worth the extra 15,000 yen or so?  Should I
forget it and just get a cheap NAT/Masq box?

2. Anyone has experience with Allied Telesis's AR320?  It seems to be the
most featureful but has only 10Mbps interfaces on both sides, so I am
worried about its throughput.

http://www.allied-telesis.co.jp/products/product/brouter/ar320/index.html

3. I am also considering ZyXEL's ZyWALL 10, or a SonicWall but those seems
to be expensive.  Any experience in those?

4. Planex's BRL-04FW is the most inexpensive but they don't provide
manuals on their website so I can't check how the user interface is.  (And
I know some of you have some not-so-good experience with PCI gear).

http://www.planex.co.jp/brl-01/brl-04fw.htm

Stephen