m0n0wall, smoothwall, ipcop?

[bluegreenturtle]

Which is the easiest and fastest to get going and administer?

I installed Clarkconnect yesterday and liked it but don't think it's worth the fees (I need some of the features of the office version).

BTW, do any of these support QoS? I couldn't seem to find a clear answer.

I just need it to be a firewall/router that will put up an ipsec VPN between two offices. Traffic shaping would be nice (for a video conferencing unit). I've given up getting dual wan support - I'll just put some devices on one connection and others on the other.

Comments on these 3?

 

[n0cmonkey]

OpenBSD is the best out there, bar none.

The others are just modified FreeBSD and Linux. Bleh. I'm pretty sure you can get QoS with m0n0wall, and I know you can do it with Linux. These particular distributions never held much appeal.

 

[Goosemaster]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
OpenBSD is the best out there, bar none.

The others are just modified FreeBSD and Linux. Bleh. I'm pretty sure you can get QoS with m0n0wall, and I know you can do it with Linux. These particular distributions never held much appeal.

oh you...

 

[Goosemaster]

m0n0wall can do QoS, traffic shaping, ipsec VPN, but it cannot do NAT traversal and it cannot do dual-WAN connections. pfsense, a derivative of m0n0wall, can do dual wan connections with failover.

The main thigns that really cipples them is that they don't have any routing protocols

 

[petey117]

ipcop can handle multiple public IP addresses, and has an extensive collection of add ons, that will even do application level filtering.
there may be an add-on that supports routing (not sure)
I have used clark connect and smoothwall, but the free versions are a little crippled compared to IPcop

 

[Goosemaster]

delete

 

[bluegreenturtle]

are you saying that ipcop can load balance? Or just can handle the 2 wans. It does look nifty - I may give it a shot. I just have to set it up and get it going before a trip to the other office at the other end of the ipsec tunnel.

 

[petey117]

it can handle a wan connection with multiple public ip addresses
it can also handle multiple wans, including dmz zones, and multiple green or red interfaces
i am sure there is a way to loadbalance via a plugin or something, but unless you are using connections with the same speed and quality, i would not reccomend it

 

[Goosemaster]

Originally posted by: petey117
it can handle a wan connection with multiple public ip addresses
it can also handle multiple wans, including dmz zones, and multiple green or red interfaces
i am sure there is a way to loadbalance via a plugin or something, but unless you are using connections with the same speed and quality, i would not reccomend it

seriously though, how does one add these plugins..I haven't found much on it besides the plugins themselves....

 

[bluegreenturtle]

I guess i will have to test them out. Based on the documentation it looks like ipcop is aimed at people with very basic understandings of networking (lots of definitions of terms, etc) but it sounds like you are saying that it is more sophisticated than that.

 

[petey117]

goose,
if you go to the ipcop addons page, you will find links....one of them has an Add-on server. if you install that, it adds a page to the firewall that can scan for, download, and install add-ons automagically
ones that are not supported by this usually have step by step instructions

bgturtle:
you are right on both counts. It is setup to be usable by the less advanced users, but at the same time supports all of the advanced features that the power users crave.

I like it...

 

[Goosemaster]

Originally posted by: petey117
goose,
if you go to the ipcop addons page, you will find links....one of them has an Add-on server. if you install that, it adds a page to the firewall that can scan for, download, and install add-ons automagically
ones that are not supported by this usually have step by step instructions

bgturtle:
you are right on both counts. It is setup to be usable by the less advanced users, but at the same time supports all of the advanced features that the power users crave.

I like it...

cool!