Best Linux firewall

scottalanmiller

You certainly can do a normal OS like CentOS or Suse. But a firewall appliance OS will likely be far better.

lance

I guess a good spot to start is do you have a budget or are you trying to use old hardware and free software to accomplish this.

scottalanmiller

If Linux is a necessity, Untangle is the most common product found in the SMB. But it tends to be too complex for its own good. We used to use SmoothWall long ago, they were good.

scottalanmiller

The big leader in this space is not Linux but FreeBSD with pfSense. PfSense is generally considered the best of breed for this role.

lance

@scottalanmiller said:

If Linux is a necessity, Untangle is the most common product found in the SMB. But it tends to be too complex for its own good. We used to use SmoothWall long ago, they were good.

I've also heard a lot of good things about untangle.

Carnival Boy

I've been using the open source Smoothwall Express for well over 10 years and love it. It's Linux based and quite configurable, but runs straight out of the box. It's never let me down. Download the ISO, boot an old PC with 2 NICs, tell it which NIC is on the internal side and which is on the external side and it installs. Once it is insalled, you logon to the web interface and use the GUI to configure it (such as opening ports, viewing logs, setting forwarding rules). We have it running as a virtual machine. There is a corporate edition, which isn't free but offers lots of additional features, like VPN. We used the corporate edition for a while but have now gone back to the free edition.

scottalanmiller

@lance said:

@scottalanmiller said:

If Linux is a necessity, Untangle is the most common product found in the SMB. But it tends to be too complex for its own good. We used to use SmoothWall long ago, they were good.

I've also heard a lot of good things about untangle.

Mostly, I think, that is because of their marketing. It's a rather weak product overall. Way too complicated and weird for its own good.

scottalanmiller

@Carnival-Boy NTG ran SmoothWall for years.

Definitely very easy to use. We had the commercial version back then. They are still around and offer free versions plus commercial support options too.

JaredBusch

I will recommend pfSense as a firewall/router or Vyatta.

scottalanmiller

@JaredBusch said:

I will recommend pfSense as a firewall/router or Vyatta.

Is Vyatta open source still being maintained? Since Brocade bought them they seem to have gone silent.

Ambarishrh

We've been using ClearOS in our branch offices for almost 4 years. http://www.clearfoundation.com/Software/overview.html

Pretty straight forward and easy to manage using the web interface.

JaredBusch

@ambarishrh said:

We've been using ClearOS in our branch offices for almost 4 years. http://www.clearfoundation.com/Software/overview.html

Pretty straight forward and easy to manage using the web interface.
I loved ClearOS prior to version 6. I gave up on it after that.

scottalanmiller

I've heard good things about ClearOS but have not used it myself. Being built on a base of CentOS is nice.

Joy

@lance said:

I guess a good spot to start is do you have a budget or are you trying to use old hardware and free software to accomplish this.

Well i am trying to use old Hardware and free software
Good morning Everyone..

scottalanmiller

@Joyfano said:

@lance said:

I guess a good spot to start is do you have a budget or are you trying to use old hardware and free software to accomplish this.

Well i am trying to use old Hardware and free software
Good morning Everyone..

Good morning. Pretty much all of the options here are free. So you have a lot to choose from.

Joy

@scottalanmiller said:

If Linux is a necessity, Untangle is the most common product found in the SMB. But it tends to be too complex for its own good. We used to use SmoothWall long ago, they were good.

We already have Untangle here,Yeah its was built by someone for us. I want to built another one so that i will have an idea from end to end.

Joy

Yeah.. hmm sure thanks for the option. i hope it will goes fine.working with this..

RoguePacket

Good ones have already been mentioned—Smoothwall Express; pfSense; Untangle; ClearOS—yet a couple more:

m0n0wall
Sophos UTM (née Ataro)