Best choice for home router/firewall?

T

The Hunter

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 29, 2002
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Not sure if this is better here or in the Networking forum...
I've got a linux box at home that's being used as a NAT router/firewall running ClarkConnect. I'm planning on rebuilding it, and I want to make it a little more functional. I'm looking for something that will give me a quick setup for a basic NAT router/firewall (ie. I dont have to write out all sorts of iptables rules myself), but still give me a fully featured linux distro that would be good for learning on, as well as installing other services/what have you as I feel like it. A nice web based firewall config (for port forwarding, opening/closing ports, etc) would be very nice as well, but not essential/

What's a good choice for this? Is there a package that will install on top of a basic distro to make an easy router/firewall, or am I better off going with a dedicated router distro?

Thanks for your help.
 
It shouldn't be hard to make any reasonably normal distro into a NAT firewall/router. From a security POV it'd be better to use something small and dedicated, but ... don't let that bother you.


Personally, I'd use a BSD, partly because that's what I know best, and partly because I think pf looks much friendlier than iptables.
If you want a simple boot-and-go setup with a web interface, try m0n0wall, but you won't be able to set up anything else on it.
 
webmin seems to be the standard web based admin template. it works for many distro's and is generally able to keep things easy for peeps.
 
The Hunter said:
What's a good choice for this? Is there a package that will install on top of a basic distro to make an easy router/firewall, or am I better off going with a dedicated router distro?
Click to expand...

Part of the problem is that the firewall distros strip out a lot of funcationally to provide for a more secure platform (or more acurately, they don't compile anything not needed).

So if you want a firewall distro go that route, if you want a Linux system to play with you might wish to consider a separate system to work with. Kinda depends on how comfortable you are making mistakes on your primary firewall and NAT device.

If you do go the build your own route there are many HOW-TOs online and helpful scripts:
http://www.bastille-linux.org/
http://www.grennan.com/Firewall-HOWTO.html
 
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