Soft-Router Comparison

Is there some sort of review/comparison that shows all the features of the various soft-routers, capabilities, limitations, recommendations, etc... ?

Smoothwall, Untangle, Endian, IPCop, pfSense and m0n0wall.

I'm thinking of giving this a try, but I have some minimal requirements:

Fast thru-put and low latency. Probably not an issue.
IPSec passthrough for multiple outgoing CheckPoint Secureclient VPN connections.
Easy to set up open ports for VNC, etc...
Statically assign IP addresses to DHCP devices. AKA DHCP Reservation.
uPnP support.

In other words, I want ALL of the features in my DGL-4300 Router, plus higher performance

thanks!

Since I've been so interested in them over time....I've also looked..but never really found a good "comparison" place.

I resorted to trying them out myself....since they're relatively quick to install, getup, and running (in a home environment anyways).

Many will let you boot to a live CD and run it from that session...so you can sort of test drive without even installing.

In your experience, which has been the best?

Just looking at how they are structured, documented, etc... IPcop seems rather impressive on the surface.

Also, I intend on building a new machine for this.

I was figuring on one of the little shoebox computers, with built-in video, basic Intel MB, low-end C2D, 512MB RAM, 40GB drive, basic CD and a pair of Intel Pro/1000 GT NICs.

Sound reasonable?

It should fit nicely beside my two QNAP TS-201/209 NAS boxes

My observations....having tried smoothwall, m0n0wall, pfsense, IPCop, Endian, and Untangle....

IPCop seems to have the biggest following, the biggest development, 3rd party add-ons, support groups, forums, wikis, etc.

After piddling around with the first 4 for a while....I found my favorite to be IPCop. After poking around IPCop some more...I came across a cool add-on..called Copfilter.

Enter the UTM appliance..Unified Threat Management. Now you have a powerful gateway appliance that give you antivirus/spam/powerful intrusion detection.

I then found Endian..which is built on top of IPCop with the Copfilter add-in...but groomed into a much smoother interface. Ran that for a while.

Back 'n forth with a few other hardware routers at home....it was several months ago that someone in this forum mentioned Untangle...and that got me back into trying them. It's a killer package.

Note...I know you'll see people say "You can run them on any old computer"..yeah that's true if you're running the basic ones like smoothwall, m0n0wall, pfense, or basic IPCop. But as soon as you go the UTM distros like Endian or IPCop w/Copfilter, or Untangle..you'll want a box of good horsepower, like a GHz or higher, and 512 megs or more.

And it's these UTM ones that really interest me. Especially for clients..business networks.

Download a bunch..take a few old hard drives...install one to each. Keep dorking around back 'n forth til you settle on one you'll like.

Ok, for hardware here is what I'm considering:

Ultra MicroFly uATX Case w/400 watt supply.

Intel E4400 Processor. I think that's the cheapest C2D there is.

512MB RAM

Basic 40GB or so Hard Drive
Basic CDRW/DVD Drive

Two Intel Pro/1000 MT Desktop Adapters OR a single Pro/1000 MT Dual Server Network Adapter. Any benefit with going with the latter?

On the motherboard side, I'm kinda lost in the choices.

The two top choices right now look like the:

Intel DG965OT
Intel DG33BU

Both are the same price.

Any one use either of those boards in a shoe-box case like the MicroFly?

Any support issues with the mentioned firewalls and the above hardware?

Ok, this is cool. Endian has a VMWare Image for download.

I can install the free VMWare Player on my file server, load up Endian, and give it a shot I guess!

This would be kinda nice. If VMWare is stable under Win2K Server Enterprise, I could run the firewall and the file server without having to buy any hardware except another NIC card

And the board may even already have an on-board I can use. I'll have to look.

One thing I have not been able to determine with these soft-routers is if they support uPnP. That's a deal-breaker for me.

TechLarry said:

Ok, this is cool. Endian has a VMWare Image for download.

I can install the free VMWare Player on my file server, load up Endian, and give it a shot I guess!

This would be kinda nice. If VMWare is stable under Win2K Server Enterprise, I could run the firewall and the file server without having to buy any hardware except another NIC card

Click to expand...

I did that with Untangle a couple of weeks ago.

When I built prior nix distro routers...I used some old Compaq small form factor desktops I had kicking around, a Deskrpro EN with a P3 733 or so, and an Evo 510 with a P4 2.4. Similar Intel chipset, and same onboard Intel Pro 10/100 NIC..I used a 3COM 905 in the riser card for the second NIC. I could swap linux distro's from box to box...they booted up and ran fine on either box..similar hardware.

Stonecat, is there one on that list that is better at bandwidth shaping/throttling.
I have been playing around with Monowall but it doesn't seem to be one of it's strong points.

Ok, I've pulled the plug on this idea and installed a DLink DIR-655 instead. Has all the performance in the world, and cost me 1/5 the money

Dzero said:

Stonecat, is there one on that list that is better at bandwidth shaping/throttling.
I have been playing around with Monowall but it doesn't seem to be one of it's strong points.

Click to expand...

From the threads on them here on this forum....it seems of "stock" distros...PFSense has the strongest options in this area.

IPCop by itself isn't too strong....but IPCop has a huge "add-on" community..and there is one add-on for it called "Advanced QoS".

So you might want to peek at those 2.

Thanks, I'll give IPCop a try next.