Re: At Last

[Fraser Farrell <fraser@trilobytes.com.au>]

On Fri, 4 Mar 2005, Chris Albertson wrote:
>I would recommend using a low powered Linux system for
>the above router.  It would have four Ethernet cards installed
>and run "shorewall" http://www.shorewall.net/


Tom,

Another possibility is Smoothwall Express (http://www.smoothwall.org);
which can turn an old Pentium or 586/686 or newer PC into an effective
router + internet gateway + DHCP server + VPN tunnel manager + proxy
server + firewall (including portforwarding and DMZ's). Includes a
builtin SSH and web interface for remote administration....and the web
admin is browser neutral. You also get a good intrusion detection
system, a proxy server, and various logging capabilities.

The included Virtual Private Networking package is basic, but there
are user-contributed updates ("OpenSWAN" + "vpnpack") which greatly
improve the VPN functionality. Highly recommended if you're wanting to
do VPN between your network and somewhere else on the internet.

Smoothwall Ex supports numerous USB broadband modems, ISDN modems, and
standard Ethernet xDSL modems out of the box. On either static or
dynamic public IP addresses (and it does automated notification of a
new dynamic IP to dyndns.org and such). I've even got Smoothwall
working successfully with the Telstra NT1 Plus2 ISDN device -- which
is a Windows-specific gadget unlike anything else in the known
universe.

The manuals (downloadable PDFs) are very good. And their online forum
contains a lot of useful tips and advice too. One suggestion I would
endorse is to use a box with at least 48MB RAM. Preferably 64MB or
more. Smoothwall will indeed run with 32MB but its performance will
suffer significantly.

But well worth a look if you need more capabilities than the typical
"broadband modem & gateway". Your existing broadband gadget can be
setup as either a dumb modem (Bridge Mode), or you configure it to
forward everything to the Smoothwall box.


My $0.02 worth :-)



cheers,

Fraser Farrell