question about a firewall

[Hetz Ben Hamo]

Hi people,
As I setup my VPS/dedicated hosting here in Israel, I have been asked by the
hosting company (Netvision) to either buy and bring a firewall or rent from
them since the bandwidth I bought exceeds what is allowed under their
firewall.
They're offering Cisco 1383 (or 1838, I don't remember exactly which model).

As a person who really loves Linux, I thought to myself: Why do I need to
buy/rent some proprietary Cisco solution? Can't Linux handle the firewall
task well? I'm sure Cisco/Checkpoint solutions are great, but yet...

So here's my question: If you were in my shoes, would you take a cisco or
apply some Linux solution? If you say Linux solution, what kind of solution?
Could you name an app/module/whatever that can do a good protection against
the usual suspect and protect against stuff like DDoS attack?

I prefer the Linux solution because then I can run other services on this
machine (small mail server, nagios, etc..)

Suggestions?

Thanks,
Hetz

-- 
my blog (hebrew): http://benhamo.org
Skype: heunique
MSN: hetz-blog at benhamo.org
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