topic CheckPoint Dinosaurs in Off Topic

CheckPoint Dinosaurs

HristoGrigorov — Wed, 11 Nov 2026 15:21:37 GMT

Today, I found a picture of me in a computer lab working with CheckPoint Firewall-1 / NG. I was a QA back then (year 2001) for a major anti-virus vendor and we were doing Anti-Virus for Firewalls solution based on OPSEC and CVP protocols.

Unfortunately, I can't share the pic because of an NDA. But I remember it was installed on Windows NT (shame on you Check Point 😜). It worked well but the data-trickling feature was giving us headaches and we worked together with their devs to fix it....

Eeeh, memories...

So, who else qualifies himself as CheckPoint dinosaur?

Re: CheckPoint Dinosaurs

D_TK — Wed, 11 Nov 2026 15:26:52 GMT

Time flies for sure. We bought our first licenses back in 97 or 98 to host a solution at a colo in SJ (AboveNet). I believe the version was 3.01b and yeah, we ran it on NT....

Good times

Re: CheckPoint Dinosaurs

PhoneBoy — Wed, 11 Nov 2026 15:34:45 GMT

30 years of Check Point experience here.
First version I used was version 2...on SunOS/Solaris, Windows NT, Nokia IPSO, and...probably a lot of other things.

Re: CheckPoint Dinosaurs

Vincent_Bacher — Wed, 11 Nov 2026 15:42:45 GMT

I first came across Check Point around 1998 or 1999. At the time, we were trying to install a 3b on HP-UX.
Then I changed jobs and worked exclusively on Check Point; that was in 2000.
There, we used Solaris and good old Stonebeat for high availability.
Later on, the usual suspects like IPSO and SPLAT came along, before Gaia was launched.
An anecdote about IPSO: there used to be these Nokia gateways with slightly domed casings; we just called them ‘Darth Vader helmets’.
These days, I hardly ever touch the CLI anymore, and I hardly ever use SmartConsole either. I do everything with Python and GitHub repositories, where all sorts of tasks are carried out via workflows on management systems and gateways via SSH and/or API.

Re: CheckPoint Dinosaurs

HristoGrigorov — Wed, 11 Nov 2026 15:49:07 GMT

Think we had these IPSO toys as well. And a CyberGuard firewall appliance based on SCO Unix.

Awesome stories, keep them coming.... 😀

Re: CheckPoint Dinosaurs

Vincent_Bacher — Wed, 11 Nov 2026 16:07:52 GMT

By the way- Check Point Dinosaurs" would actually be a fitting name for my team here.
Whenever a new Check Point contact introduces themselves and proudly mentions they've been with the company for how many years, I usually reply:"Well, you're currently facing somewhere between 100 and 150 years of combined Check Point experience.

🤣

Re: CheckPoint Dinosaurs

Tomer_Noy — Thu, 12 Nov 2026 06:56:07 GMT

I haven't reached 30 years, but I remember fixing a UI bug in SmartDashboard on Solaris.

That wasn't fun... 😉

Re: CheckPoint Dinosaurs

Steffen_Appel — Thu, 12 Nov 2026 11:08:25 GMT

First Checkpoint was 1997 3.x on Solaris 2.6.

Re: CheckPoint Dinosaurs

Timothy_Hall — Thu, 12 Nov 2026 12:41:04 GMT

For me it was 1997 with version 3.0b, running Solstice Firewall-1 on a Sparc Classic with the Solaris OS. 50 MHZ processor baby!

Re: CheckPoint Dinosaurs

Jan_Kleinhans — Thu, 12 Nov 2026 13:53:52 GMT

My first contact with checkpoint was also NG in 2001. In combination with Rainwall clustering 😞

So 25 years now.

Re: CheckPoint Dinosaurs

_Val_ — Thu, 12 Nov 2026 14:29:56 GMT

Solaris and IPSO are common, but did you ever touch CP on HP OS or AIX, folks?

Re: CheckPoint Dinosaurs

_Val_ — Thu, 12 Nov 2026 14:30:51 GMT

yeah, HP was "fun"