router vs m0n0wall/ipcop??

S

scotty do

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 20, 2004
Messages
164
Is there a difference. Im running a wrt54g with the hacked firmware, and firewall on. I only have a 5mb cable connection, is there any advantage of running a seperate firewall box/router?

Also, I see lots of users with small lans and multiple switches, what is the point of this??
 
its the [H] factor!

You could be just fine with the router you have...but wouldn't it be cooler to have a dedicated box in your attic that routes your internet??

honestly, there is no good reason for lots of switches or a dedicated box on a small lan....buts cool
cool.gif
 
I'm running a smoothy but if you have the wrt56g w/ hacked firmware you are just as good. I would leave it in your current setup.
 
scotty do said:
How about compared to other routers eg. linksys wireless b router?
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I run IPCop because it is just so much more stable than other routers. I had 2 netgear routers and a D-Link router. I found that under certain conditions, I could cause them to lock up; this was really inconvient because it would sometimes do this while I was at work and I couldn't do anything until I got home. I don't have any experiance working with a hacked wrt54g, but I would assume that since that is also running linux it would be better that the others.

What exactly do you do on your network? I run e-mail, picture hosting, and stream music from it at work; so I needed a robust router/firewall. I also run multiple sub-nets at home. I repair computers and I am not going to plug some virus/spyware ridden computer in the the same sub-net as my server and my clean systems. Overkill, probably; but it sure is nice. Basically it came down to buying another crappy router; or getting a much nicer, more secure, more stable router for free.

I agree with Karandras69, if you are happy with what you are running, don't rock the boat.
 
instead of turning that other box into a *nix router, turn it into a *nix file/print server. i recently purchased a wrt54g and will be making it my router (instead of just my wireless ap), and i'll be changing my gentoo box to a dedicated file/print server.

also multiple switches might be a function of topography. i have one room where my cable modem, routerbox, and ap reside, and another where my desktop/laptop hook up. i have another switch in the second room instead having two cat5 runs.
 
Well I use to run an Astaro(linux based firewall/router) on a dedicated box.

Astaro had some nice features like squid(http proxy), smtp proxy and support for pretty much any number of nics. This allows you to have completely seperate networks with different fw rules between them For most people this is way overkill, but if you really want a secure wireless this is the way to go. Complete firewall off the wireless, and only allow clients to VPN to your firewall to get out.

You could also use the above method to give out free wireless to people while still protecting your network.

However I recently bought a WRT54GS and put a hacked firmware on it. I like it, main reason is its smaller quieter, uses less power, etc. With the hacked firmware the only things I miss are proxy servers, however these should be on a seperate box anyhow. Being able to seperate networks is still possible with VLAN ability of the WRT54GS.

One thing I am not sure of is how well the WRT54G can handle bandwidth with increased functions are used like QoS and pptp. I have not yet played with QoS and PPTP.
 
m1abram said:
Well I use to run an Astaro(linux based firewall/router) on a dedicated box...
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I have just been looking online about this astaro and apparently, its no longer free. I might be missing something, but I'm just wondering if there is a free version out there. I'm having some issues with smoothwall and have decided to check out some alternatives, so let me know if theres anything else too. Thanks
 
As far as mutliple switches goes, for me, it really is a function of the house.

My main switch sits in the center of the house. Each room in the house (with the exceptions of the bathroom [that's what wireless is for! :eek: ]) has a network jack that plugs into that switch. Also into that switch is my Wireless access point.

In my home office, I have (currently) two printers with HP Jetdirect boxes, two servers, my desktop, another desktop that I am playing with some things with (it is also folding), and lastly the IPCop box. Plus that is also where I work on client machines. So I have at least 7 machines in that one room that need network connections, none of them have wireless. I have one network jack that leads back to the central switch.

How do you hook up 6 computers there, along with my wife's computer in another room, and any visitors that I have over? So I have a switch in my office, and another one for down in the living room just in case.

Again, because of the built in Cat-5e in the walls, multiple switches just makes sense for a room that has or has the potential to have more than one machine.
 
elguapo said:
I have just been looking online about this astaro and apparently, its no longer free. I might be missing something, but I'm just wondering if there is a free version out there. I'm having some issues with smoothwall and have decided to check out some alternatives, so let me know if theres anything else too. Thanks
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Well it has been a few months since I kept up with Astaro. But it use to have a free licsense for home use. You just had to register for it. Use to be if you were an active member on the forum and actually helped people and reported bugs you could get a Enterprise licsense for home use for free. That policy changed :(

Its a good product, however unless you really really need the features it offers, for home use I like the WRT54G with 3rd party firmware.
 
I've used m0n0wall and ipcop at our business as well as a linksys router. I kept running into hardware issues when trying to make monowall or ipcop manage three NICs (packets dropped, high latency). So now I use the linksys router to manage our office switch/network while IPcop manages our DMZ Hosting network. I like the logs and graphs ipcop displays so I can monitor traffic. m0n0wall was nice, I ran it for a few weeks inplace of ipcop. I like its small footprint and once I figured out how to setup its routing commands I didn't have any issues with it, but it wasn't as robust as ipcop so I switched back. The ipcop server has been running for about half a year without a reboot without any issues.
 
sieb said:
I like the logs and graphs ipcop displays so I can monitor traffic.
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With Linksys and 3rd party firmware, the linksys will support SNMP and sending syslogs to a log server. So you can make your own pretty graphs of the linksys data. Rather a remarkable little box for so cheap. Granted it does require a little work on your end to do this stuff, but it is completely possible.

Wallwatcher is a quick way to get access to the linksys data, however it is not the most robust app. It tends to crash on me, so I would not use it if it is critical to anything.
 
You should just save yourself some cash and put throw some old hardware together and load IPCOP on it... instead of spending $100+ 'ish on some Dlink router... and I've had bad luck with SMC Barricade routers and the Dlink DI-624. Plus w/ the webcaching, you just can't beat that. The more old ram the better :)

Second of all, a Linux router is so much more robust than a SOHO router. I don't care what anyone says. I've bit torrent'ed my Dlink to death, along with eMule. These two p2p apps are gonna need more than some fucking shit end router :mad:
 
I find my smoothwall is more stable than the Linksys/Dlink routers I've used. Most of them have locked up once in awhile for no apparent reason. My smoothwall goes for months with no problems whatsoever!

QJ

P.S. The logging capability is worth using a smoothwall alone.
 
MooCow said:
Second of all, a Linux router is so much more robust than a SOHO router. I don't care what anyone says. I've bit torrent'ed my Dlink to death, along with eMule. These two p2p apps are gonna need more than some fucking shit end router :mad:
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Well use to run nothing but linux boxes for router/firewalls. I am now using a WRT54GS with 3rd party firmware and have had zero issues for the past 6 months with it.

Also note that the Linksys boxes are just a linux box, with a 3rd party firmware you can ssh in and get a shell. I even define my own iptables rules for it. Granted you can not load large things like squid on it, but for DHCP, DNS caching, and even PPTP it is plenty.
 
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