A quality network wide virus scanning system should be considered any time a firewall is contemplated. All sites should have network wide virus protection regardless if they have a firewall or not.

Some businesses may need more than one firewall if they have more than one Internet connection. Some larger businesses may want internal Firewalls to apply rules for their various departments as to what they can and cannot do. Firewalls can force a reorganization of the networking infrastructure for a large site to take maximum advantage of what the firewall offers. Even modest sized organizations might want to consider network reorganization to improve network performance and employee satisfaction with the networks ability to handle the data processing load.

If a business is considering redundant routes to the Internet or between their remote locations, this needs to be addressed up front because it has serious implications on what is even possible. If a site wants to implement load balancing, quality of service monitoring, bandwidth allocation, and other technologies within the foreseeable future, these issues should be addressed before any decisions on Firewalls are made.