SmoothWall

[JiF]Mike · Post by **[JiF]Mike** » Wed May 02, 2007 12:04 am

Yep..it's official, I am on one of the biggest Linux kicks of my life. I just replaced my old Linksys router with a firewall from http://www.smoothwall.org. It's a small (ISO image is 50MB!) open source Linux firewall that worked on first bootup. I installed it on a P3-500 with 512MB ram and a 20GB HDD I had laying around. The hardest part was finding a second nic to use. Perhaps it's just a coincidence but the internet seems faster, and our latency to WoW has droped by about 80-100ms. I haven't tried any other games yet, but so far I am really liking it. It also has a lot of options that you simply don't find in a standard router. It's a great use for that old pc many of us probably have laying around in pieces here and there.

[JiF]Beej1024 · Post by **[JiF]Beej1024** » Wed May 02, 2007 12:10 pm

You may also want to look at http://www.astaro.com , they offer a free version of their stuff that you can install on a beige box too. Firewall, AV, AS, VPN, all included. I just installed it on a PC at work to play with, have not had a allot of it.

[JiF]Mike · Post by **[JiF]Mike** » Wed May 02, 2007 12:52 pm

Wow that looks very nice. When I went to download it though it said it was a 30 day evaluation version. I prefer to stick with open source at home, but I may have use for that elsewhere. Thanx for the link.

[JiF]Beej1024 · Post by **[JiF]Beej1024** » Wed May 02, 2007 5:38 pm

There is a free for the home version, and it is open source.

[JiF]Mike · Post by **[JiF]Mike** » Wed May 02, 2007 7:41 pm

I couldn't find any info about a home license until I registered an account. Granted I didn't look at every little thing, but I would think such a thing would be more visible...oh well. I may give it a try tonight, but if I take the internet down again my family may kill me! Last night after I had Smoothwall up and running I decided to totally rewire many parts of the network moving both the cable modem and firewall to a different part of the house, plus moving our wireless access point, and hub. Then I labeled everything I could! I had the internet down for a lot longer than I planned simply because it had been so long since I messed with any of it. If I even mention doing something tonight....things might get ugly. I suppose I could just blame it on Beej though.

[JiF]Mike · Post by **[JiF]Mike** » Wed May 02, 2007 8:08 pm

Was just reading some of the forums at astaro.org about the v7 Home license. A number of long time users seem upset by some of the changes. One of the biggest complaints is the new limit of concurrent connections. I gues2 it use to be around 32,000 and is now 1000. Think I will skip this one for now. I did find another open source firewall project at http://www.vyatta.com that has some interesting reviews. One of the reviews from ZDNet says Cisco should be scared of them..that peeks my interest.

(BDU)opcenter · Post by **(BDU)opcenter** » Wed May 02, 2007 8:09 pm

I run OpenWRT on my Linksys WRT54G. Much lower power than using a regular PC and much smaller. It has a cool web-based configuration interface and it seems to work really well. It runs embedded Linux, so it's almost as flexible as having a regular PC running Linux. There's just very limited space for extra applications beyond the essentials.

[JiF][AARP]Grimp · Post by **[JiF][AARP]Grimp** » Wed May 02, 2007 9:13 pm

I bought a WRT54G for the same reason, but I bought a newer one which can't run OpenWRT from what I have heard

[JiF][AARP]Grimp · Post by **[JiF][AARP]Grimp** » Wed May 02, 2007 9:19 pm

I checked the website again. I have a V5 WRT54G and its not fully supported yet. You want a V4 or earlier to be supported.

[JiF]Mike · Post by **[JiF]Mike** » Thu May 03, 2007 1:02 am

I replaced my wrt54g with smoothwall. The wrt54g is a lot better than most routers, but it really can't hold a candle to Smoothwall. I forget what version I was running, but I was not running the original firmware.

I looked more into the Vyatta open source and it is just too much, and too complicated. The quick start guide was 60 pages! I'm gonna stick with the Smoothwall, there are a number of community addons that look interesting.

[JiF]Mike · Post by **[JiF]Mike** » Mon May 21, 2007 3:44 pm

So I finally took the time to try another open source linux firewall distro called ClarkConnect. It's an odd name, but it's a lot better than I thought it would be with many more features than SmoothWall. I can easily use this server as a file server as well as a firewall. I could even have it act as a Primary Domain Controller easily configured via the web interface. It even comes with web content filtering, and updates free of charge to home users which is nice when there are kids in the house. Check out the site for all the features, it's pretty comprehensive and was easy to install and setup. I really like the VPN via pptp, makes it very easy to connect to the home network and was one feature I have been looking for.

[JiF][AARP]Grimp · Post by **[JiF][AARP]Grimp** » Mon May 21, 2007 3:52 pm

That certainly looks cool. Lots of stuff with it.

[JiF]Rhykin · Post by **[JiF]Rhykin** » Wed May 30, 2007 9:26 pm

So I finally took the time to try another open source linux firewall distro called ClarkConnect. It's an odd name, but it's a lot better than I thought it would be with many more features than SmoothWall. I can easily use this server as a file server as well as a firewall. I could even have it act as a Primary Domain Controller easily configured via the web interface. It even comes with web content filtering, and updates free of charge to home users which is nice when there are kids in the house. Check out the site for all the features, it's pretty comprehensive and was easy to install and setup. I really like the VPN via pptp, makes it very easy to connect to the home network and was one feature I have been looking for.

Out of all of them that you tried so far, what would you recommend (or like the most)?

[JiF]Mike · Post by **[JiF]Mike** » Thu May 31, 2007 4:29 am

Easy Question....ClarkConnect...many more capabilities "out of the box".