You may recall the early religious wars between proxy and statefull firewalls. Ken went on to found Fortinet as well, the latest evolution in the history of firewall appliances. Incidently, the founder of Netscreen, Ken Xie, was actually a PIX firewall administrator at Phillips electronics when he thought up the idea of a hardware accelerated firewall appliance. From there the PIX grew into a multi-billion dollar franchise out selling its nearest competitors, Checkpoint, and Netscreen. along with its inventors, John Mayes, Brantley Coile and Johnson Wu. Cisco acquired the PIX with Network Translations, Inc. See this introductory piece on the PIX by Johna Till Johnson in the January, 1995 issue of Data Communications Magazine.
The PIX (Private Internet Exchange) was the first Network Address Translation device and later evolved into a statefull firewall. Today, July 28th, 2008 is the last day you can purchase a PIX firewall appliance from Cisco, ending one of the longest and most successful lives of a gateway security product ever.
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