Alternative to Smoothwall?

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reveille_83

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 16, 2006
Messages
238
Gurus,

I posted this in the linux subforum of Operating systems. I am looking for a Smoothwall alternative. I have used Smoothwall and love it's ease of use. I was wondering if you could just suggest similar flavors. I don't really want anything fancy I'd like something that's ultra fast and ultra easy to use :p

Thanks!
 
Endian, IPcop, pfSense, monowall, clark connect, Madriva MNF... Just to name a few...
 
i switched from smoothwall to pfsense about a year ago. pfsense offers for free, all the features that only come with the commercial edition of smoothwall, and is just a simple to install.
 
First question : What feature are you missing or not satisfied with smoothwall ?

In other words, why are you looking for alternatives ?
 
Xilikon said:
First question : What feature are you missing or not satisfied with smoothwall ?

In other words, why are you looking for alternatives ?
Click to expand...

The 64,000 dollar question.

m0n0wall/pfsense have captive portals, Clarkconnect has a bit of everything under the sun, Endian is getting rave reviews for it's mail handling. All depends on what you want.
 
what about building your own with tools such as fedora/ubuntu and shorewall + webmin? You would have total control of the box then :)
 
another reccomendation for IPCop, load up copfilter with it, and youre golden
 
P3N1X0R said:
another reccomendation for IPCop, load up copfilter with it, and youre golden
Click to expand...

Yea, perfect and efficient setup. I have been running it solid for almost 2 years now. IPCOP for the win.
 
Flak Pyro said:
what about building your own with tools such as fedora/ubuntu and shorewall + webmin? You would have total control of the box then :)
Click to expand...

that will work, but have fun using webmin to configure all the logging, ipsec tunnels to other firewalls, multiple routes to other networks, multiple interfaces each with multiple ips, traffic graphing, on and on and on and on and on.

a firewall distro already has all these things banged out for you, all you have to do is install it and let it do its job.
 
Sharaz Jek said:
that will work, but have fun using webmin to configure all the logging, ipsec tunnels to other firewalls, multiple routes to other networks, multiple interfaces each with multiple ips, traffic graphing, on and on and on and on and on.

a firewall distro already has all these things banged out for you, all you have to do is install it and let it do its job.
Click to expand...

Yeah, they're great....until you want to, for example, set up a bridged VPN with OpenVPN only to find that the tap\tun module isn't included in your fancy Linux firewall edition's kernel. Then you're basically up a certain creek without a paddle.

And there are numerous instances of this type of issue - a roll your own firewall offers MANY more features as it includes a more beefed up kernel and at least, some dev. tools to help you go along as well. Also, at least with a roll-your-own distro, you don't have to go swandering off to the support forums as soon as something doesn't work - because at least, you'll know how everything YOU set up works and where everything YOU set up is meant to be located, unlike firewall distros where it's all over the shop... /rant

+1 vote for Roll-Your-Own Linux Firewall with shorewall or whatever.
 
Everyone has offered really good linux firewall solutions. What it all comes down to is... what features are you specifically looking for? Everyone here has their own preference. I myself have used ipcop, clarkconnect, and Endian. Right now, Endian is the best solution for what I need. It does everything that I need it to do and then some. Besides, I am not really linux savy so for me to build my own would be a nightmare.

So, will all that being said, I would advise you to actually figure out what features are most important to you and what you really need in a firewall. Then, go through all of these suggestions and research them and figure out what distro would work best for you.
 
Guys,

Thanks for all the suggestions.

The biggest thing i'm looking for is ease of use / setup. tons of options for port forwarding and maybe VPN? (Now forgive my lack of knowledge on this)

I'd like to VPN into my linux firewall box and just have access to my network in the easiest way possible (any distro out of the box do this?)
 
reveille_83 said:
Guys,

Thanks for all the suggestions.

The biggest thing i'm looking for is ease of use / setup. tons of options for port forwarding and maybe VPN? (Now forgive my lack of knowledge on this)

I'd like to VPN into my linux firewall box and just have access to my network in the easiest way possible (any distro out of the box do this?)
Click to expand...

I havent tried others, but my linux-router distro experiance has been Freesco (on a 486DX4 packard bell), Monowall, and Pfsense. Freesco is about as basic as an older SOHO router... But if you want a simple router with low-end hardware (7 megs of ram, 386) freesco is the way to go.

Monowall and Pfsense are a bit heavier. I cant remember about Monowall, but Pfsense needs 128MB of ram to get by (really, it does or else your screwed). Pfsense also can make a swap file on a hard drive, has various packages you can install, does IPsec/openVPN and a few others although I have yet to get them to work. Ive had pfsense crashing on me right and left till I put my old-school compaq (intel based) NIC in... It did not tolerate my crappy Realtec.

Sadly all of these linux distros offer different features. You will have to play with them, and figure out which one you can live with.
 
reveille_83 said:
Guys,

Thanks for all the suggestions.

The biggest thing i'm looking for is ease of use / setup. tons of options for port forwarding and maybe VPN? (Now forgive my lack of knowledge on this)

I'd like to VPN into my linux firewall box and just have access to my network in the easiest way possible (any distro out of the box do this?)
Click to expand...

The easiest way is to download the various ISOs, burn them and install them to test till you find the one you are the most comfortable with and has the features you need. That's what I did personnally and ended up with Endian (IPCop is being gay and made a hassle for me to make it work right).Your experience may be different.
 
You gents running these dedicated firewalls... how many NICs are you running?

Is it cable/dsl modem ---> "input" NIC in the firewall ---> out of another NIC into a switch then out to your boxen?

Or do some of you have an armada of NICs going to each PC?

:)
 
Single output to LAN is what most people do. Unless they are setting up zones for servers and wireless.
 
mdameron said:
You gents running these dedicated firewalls... how many NICs are you running?

Is it cable/dsl modem ---> "input" NIC in the firewall ---> out of another NIC into a switch then out to your boxen?

Or do some of you have an armada of NICs going to each PC?

:)
Click to expand...


Mine has 3 nic on the firewall/router, 1 to get the incoming traffic (RED interface in most distros), 1 to distribute on the internal network (GREEN interface) and 1 to feed a wireless AP (BLUE inteface) mainly to avoid ppl taking a peek at the internal network. Most distros can take up to 4, with the 4th being the DMZ (ORANGE) for the internet servers like ftp/apache/vent/etc...

The GREEN inteface is feeding a 16 ports switch in my case. You can theorically feed tens of computers off each interface by using hubs and switches.
 
4 nics

1 for dsl (red)
1 for local lan (green)
1 for wifi (blue)
1 for dmz zone (orange)

ipcop FTW
 
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