I'm curious as to the advantages of any, of choosing one over the other. I'm gettin my friend's old 486(in exchange for a case of beer), so I had planned on installing OpenBSD, and using that as a firewall.

This is mainly geered as a learning experience, however I'm curious as to the effectiveness between a Software Firewall(preferably free or low cost, e.g. Zone Alarm, Tiny, etc.) to a Hardware Firewall(OpenBSD).

Comments?