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Untangle - Good Software?

A

AMD_RULES

2[H]4U
Joined
Mar 26, 2007
Messages
3,010
I'm looking to setup or buy a firewall/vpn appliance for my small business in the next few months, 10 users. I need two VPN clients and good protection.
I've done some searching on the forums and online, and I think i found a great solution.

http://www.untangle.com

Does anyone have experience with this and will it be good enough for my small office? How will the vpn be? Secure? Would I be better off with this as a firewall appliance and something else for VPN?

Any help would be appreciated greatly.

- AMD_RULES
 
I'm using it at home. I have about 10 computers and about 4 users at any one time.

I run bit torrent 24/7 plus some gaming and the usual other stuff.

I really like Untangle.

It is very powerful, easy to install, and has many cool features. Give it a try.



 
ok, i'll have to try it out on a test box at home then.
Does it require a beefy hardware setup?
Can anyone comment on its VPN capabilities?
 
Yes, this is the only problem, dont expect to run it on a k7 or a pIII
 
You should be fine with a 64, i would go with that over the P4.
 
Hmm the ones you will pickup on ebay for cheap will probably be dual pentium 3 933mhz or somthing. I think for that load you would be better off with a whitebox.
 
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Fucking hell how cheap is hardware over there! Thats how much i payed for a poweredge 2500sc!

That will do fine.
 
Wow thats way cheap on ebay. I tried untangle on a 700mhz celeron pretty much unusable.
 
I'm running Untangle on a 3.0 Ghz P4 Northwood with 2 Gb of ram.

I have all of the bells and whistles running. I love it.

The hardware requirements are more than M0n0wall or IPCOP or similar. But that allows you to do real time stuff (anti virus, phishing, and what not).
 
Pocatello said:
I'm running Untangle on a 3.0 Ghz P4 Northwood with 2 Gb of ram.
I have all of the bells and whistles running. I love it.
The hardware requirements are more than M0n0wall or IPCOP or similar. But that allows you to do real time stuff (anti virus, phishing, and what not).
Click to expand...
sounds good. I'm probably gonna get something like a dual Xeon, 2GB ram, and three scsi drives in RAID5. It should be a good and fast setup :cool:
 
i only played with the emulator, but is the real qui the same?

looks like shit.

has good features, but looks the same as all the other distros, wats so special bout this one?
 
Dang, it seems cool and all but it seems like a HOG for the system requirements.

I mean if it requires so much power for just a few users, how can it handle anything larger :eek:

I run smoothwall on a few clients and they have 20-30+ users or more, seems like you would need a fire breathing C2D to power untangle to do the same that a P3 smoothwall could do :confused:
 
marley1 said:
i only played with the emulator, but is the real qui the same?

looks like shit.

has good features, but looks the same as all the other distros, wats so special bout this one?
Click to expand...

looks to be more advance and has free security updates kinda like you get with Sonicwall...

I'll have to test this out @ home to see if it's good enough for a business envoirnment...
 
You guys are way off on the specs.
The minimum are
1ghz cpu
512 of ram and
2 Nics, 3 for DMZ
HD space I don't remember I use 20 and the setup says its low.


I started with an 800mhz P3 now its a 1GHZ P3, little difference. These requirements are more for the interface than the services. There are some things you'll dow with this that will take forever without a better cpu. I'm running it at home and it seem sgreat, I don't think latency took a hit and through put isn't affected. I tested a single connection through put to around 6MB a sec with a 1 GHZ.


The VPN solution is Open VPN, I was using this way before it was put into the untangle open router package and its great. I don't think you'll have to use command lines in untalgle for open vpn so it should be even better. You an set it up with certificates so you aren't vulnerable to replay attacks. It is now multipoint to point, so you'll only need one server instance for many clients.


I'd say give it a try, take a look at buying the remote acess portal for easy distrobution of the VPN client and remote connections. The AV is ClamAV the Double AV is based on another system.. If you can get a box hell borrow one image the drive and throw untange onl it with at least 2 cards try it out. The only problem I had with it is when I brought it home to my DSL connection, it made it unstable and sluggish until I let untangle handle the PPPoE connection, I think it and my modem didn't get along with the modem having the connection.
 
marley1 said:
has good features, but looks the same as all the other distros, wats so special bout this one?
Click to expand...
"Looks like all others"? Show me one...just one..that has the features Untangle does.

Antivirus scanning of http/pop3/smtp/ftp traffic...now you're down to less than a handful of others such as Endian and IPCop w/Copfilter.

SPAM removal of POP3/SMTP traffic...also down to just a handful.

Anti-malware (adware/spyware) protection of web traffic....I don't think any others have this

Integration with active directory

SSL VPN portal
 
AMD_RULES said:
Does anyone have experience with this and will it be good enough for my small office? How will the vpn be? Secure? Would I be better off with this as a firewall appliance and something else for VPN?

Any help would be appreciated greatly.

- AMD_RULES
Click to expand...

Yes I've deployed a few, ran the virtual appliance at home, and am currently deploying one to a client who's moving into a new building...a 20 meg pipe with closing in 100 users.

I love this distro...it's fantastic. Yes the VPN is secure..just about all the distros use OpenVPN....and if you purchase the supported pro package of Untangle..you can use the browser based SSL VPN portal.

Slap it on an upper P3 minimum with a gig of RAM (yes it's slow with just 512 megs)...and it'll run fine. Check out the specs page again.

If you can't get the horsepower...I encourage you to check out Endian firewall...similar features....rock stable, doesn't need as much horsepower as Untangle.
 
Grentz said:
Dang, it seems cool and all but it seems like a HOG for the system requirements.

I mean if it requires so much power for just a few users, how can it handle anything larger :eek:

I run smoothwall on a few clients and they have 20-30+ users or more, seems like you would need a fire breathing C2D to power untangle to do the same that a P3 smoothwall could do :confused:
Click to expand...

Comparing m0n0 or Smoothwall to Untangle is not comparing oranges to oranges. Of course UTM distros require much more horsepower than plain NAT *nix distros like m0n0 or smooth or PFSense or any of those other basic ones. You're talking about totally different functions here...UTM appliance (Unified Threat Management) require substantially more horsepower...logically. They scan traffic for viruses, spam, ad/spy/malware, and beefy intrusion detection.

Similar to prior UTM appliances like Endian...or even IPCop running Copfilter..they need more power...they're doing MUCH more than those other old *nix distros.
 
bigstusexy said:
You guys are way off on the specs.
The minimum are
1ghz cpu
512 of ram and
2 Nics, 3 for DMZ
HD space I don't remember I use 20 and the setup says its low..
Click to expand...


Actually ...you're still off specs too! The "Minimum" tested/supported, this is just according to their site...
http://wiki.untangle.com/index.php/Hardware_Requirements
..is 800MHz and 512 megs of RAM....for up to 50 users.

"Recommended" is Pentium 4 equiv or greater, and 1 gig minimum.
 
Anyone sign up for the free XD server? I see on there page that they will send a XD server with no commintment.

Seems like an easy way to try it out.

But my UTM from Freedom9 has been chugging along too and it has all that built in. I dont use all the features tho.

AMD_Rules - you keep changing your mind every day on a setup for your office, lol, your never gonna decide =) And dont run that Poweredge as the server, im telling you man they are fucking loud. Grab a Dell Optiplex slim line out of the Dell Outlet for about 300 and be set.
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
"Looks like all others"? Show me one...just one..that has the features Untangle does.

Antivirus scanning of http/pop3/smtp/ftp traffic...now you're down to less than a handful of others such as Endian and IPCop w/Copfilter.

AV Scanning and proxying of those is now in smoothwall 3.0 out of the box

SPAM removal of POP3/SMTP traffic...also down to just a handful.

I dont understand this one...why would you have the spam prevention in an inbetween box? It should be on the client or mail server IMO

Anti-malware (adware/spyware) protection of web traffic....I don't think any others have this
Very cool, wish smoothwall had a mod for this...makes me want to try untangle

Integration with active directory
None of the free distros have this and either does free untangle. Corp Smoothwall does have this though and it can be hacked into the free version of smoothwall

SSL VPN portal
Easily added to smoothwall
Click to expand...

Untangle does have some nice things out of the box, but it is also missing some things that are in the other free linux distros and more necessary for a gateway IMO. DNS caching and Caching web proxy are the two biggies for me. If it had those features I could possibly give it a try, but without those I lose some of the main functions my smoothwall does for me. The anti-spyware of untangle does sound really cool though.

Also, untangle is great for free, but not so great for pay for. Smoothwall Corp has many more features.

It seems to me untangle is a great "set it up and forget it" type solution that will run great how it is setup out of the box. But it does not seem as easy to modify or tailor to specific needs and usages with addons and such.
 
with Smoothwall there are a couple different mods that protect from spyware

Dansguardian being one after you upload a blacklist from either urlblacklist.com (first dl is free, then paid subscription after that) or Shalla's free blacklist and simply uncomment the "spyware" and "virusinfected" categories ..as well as DG uses smoothwalls built in ClamAV to do virus scanning

another mod is the Blackhole DNS mod that protects similar to what Spywareblaster and Spybot Search & Destroy's immunization feature does ..and there is an easy to use gui interface to unblock or add addtional blocks ..

I have played with Endian and have looked at Untangle and like them both for a nice all in one boxed up solution .. Smoothwall might take a bit more of getting your hands dirty (so to speak) to get it tailored to suit your needs , but that is why I keep going back to it because it is so customizable and a great community behind it to help you make those customizations.

I don't know how the Untangle community fairs , but I heard/read , that it's pretty decent ..if you use the paid/corporate versions of any of the distros out there ..then community support isn't such a big issue as it is with the "free" versions ..


[F]old|[H]ard
 
AMD_RULES said:
Untangle or Smoothwall for overall features?
Click to expand...

Depends:
A) Whether you are talking about the paid or free versions
B) Whether you are willing to add mods to smoothwall (easy to do in most cases with basic linux knowledge if any at all).
 
Grentz said:
Depends:
A) Whether you are talking about the paid or free versions
B) Whether you are willing to add mods to smoothwall (easy to do in most cases with basic linux knowledge if any at all).
Click to expand...
well let's start with the free OpenVPN.
 
untangle is quick and easy to setup and doesnt require much maintence, why moan about it?

OP untangle is a good choice.
 
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