CheckPoint Dinosaurs

[HristoGrigorov]

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? 

[D_TK]

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

[PhoneBoy]

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.

[Tomer_Noy]

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

That wasn't fun... 😉

[Vincent_Bacher]

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.

[HristoGrigorov]

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

Awesome stories, keep them coming.... 😀

[Vincent_Bacher · Accepted solution]

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.

🤣

[Timothy_Hall]

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!

[_Val_]

yeah, HP was "fun"

[Steffen_Appel]

First Checkpoint was 1997 3.x on Solaris 2.6.

[Jan_Kleinhans]

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

So 25 years now. 

[_Val_]

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