hardware firewalls (NAT routers) is the best. for MANY reasons, the most notable are that its not software and wont take up any memory, its very easy to configure, its more secure since its operating on the perimeter of the network, and you can split you connection up and create your own network, and the most notable is that they are not as prone to crashing, hence they are more reliable. so any decent hardware firewall will outperform ANY software firewall by a longshot. even speed is much faster.