untangle vs endian? other firewall/router distro

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chronic9

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after my thread http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1221297

i started gooling and reading about linux distros...

I like untangle, their setup guides are very nice and detailed. i NEVER used linux before, so setting up a router/firewall should be a fun learning experience.

Read through all the guides on their wiki page.... came up to the part where they "sell" other apps...


I havent searched far enough to see WHAT they offer. But I am guessing advanced firewalls and router apps, spam blockers. Are these apps. pricey or cheap? I was hoping to setup a free router/firewall distro. I like how untangle has the UI of the dashboard or w.e they call it.

Googled up endian.... they seem very spiffy and geared towards business that are willing to pay.... i want FREE!!!

Main reason for wanting to use linux distro is due to me using BT and my router disconnecting CONSTANLY when a torrent has too many seeds.

Most likely I will be setting this up on a VMware, if I become experienced with this distro, I might just buy a cheap p3 or something box and use that as a dedicated router PC.
 
Personally, I run m0n0 @ home and pfsense for several small work clients. Uptimes exceeding 250 days under heavy loads (~200GB monthly transfer @ home). No issues on either platform. Setup/config is a breeze.

I would definitely suggest getting a dedicated PC, low end P4 - 256-512mb, good 3Com/Intel 10/100 or gigabit nics and doing it right rather than messing around with VMW.

I've used Smoothwall/Clarkconnect in the past, but found m0n0/pfsense to be much more streamlined/speedier/robust.

Vyatta may be worth further investigation as they are relatively new, but have been getting alot of positive press/reviews.
 
untangle and endian both have open-source free for home use versions. You are probably looking at the commercial versions of their products. Just go to their downloads sections and look for the community version or something like that.

I have played with IPcop and Smoothwall in the past, they are okay. Right now I am using Endian and pretty pleased with it so far. The transparent web proxy with content filter actually works. I haven't had time to play with the OpenVPN server yet, that's another plus if you want to access your music and crap at home from the office. :)

 
wow monowall sounds pretty good!
how big of a log file does it support and how many connections? I need something that has a insane amount of supported connections. so i can safely use BT without disconnecting or any router restarts.
 
M0n0wall handles bittorrent just fine, matter of fact it even has an option to reduce the priority of BT traffic in the traffic-shaping wizard so that it doesn't bog down any other traffic.
 
Tekara said:
M0n0wall handles bittorrent just fine, matter of fact it even has an option to reduce the priority of BT traffic in the traffic-shaping wizard so that it doesn't bog down any other traffic.
Click to expand...

That's what I'm interested in is traffic shaping right?. I have a POS DSL modem that does not seem to have a buffer of any kind. Doing two things on the internet at once is pretty much worthless. For example browsing the web while downloading a file is unbearable. The file will keep coming in at the same speed, but web browser will have 20 second latencies. Bandwidth is fine though. It'll load the pages at 300KB/s. So it's not a problem with bandwidth, but rather a problem with latencies.The fuckin DSL modem sucks ass.

It's almost as if the modem has a buffer that can only do one thing at a time. It fills the buffer up with one thing, and then it is incapable of doing something else until the buffer empties.. I dont know though. That is the impression that I get, but I dont know if it is accurate.

So I was thinking that what I needed was some sort of traffic shaping software that will trick the modem so to speak. Basically what I'm interested in is not so much bandwidth but rather latency. If I can make browsing the web, while downloading a file --smoother-- then I'll be a happy camper. This is what traffic shaping is right?
 
Ghettobox said:
I can't tell you how highly I enjoy/appreciate monowall enough.
Click to expand...

I wish electricity was free.

/offtopic
Although to get round the cost of running another machine I'm going to make a VM running monowall and route my traffic through the VM :)
Tried it before with Microsofts VM but couldnt link the outgoing network adapter due to a bug.
Gonna try again very soon with VMWare.
With a single core A64, CPU utilisation was around 0 to 2% but thats with no traffic.
offtopic/
 
Nenu said:
I wish electricity was free.

/offtopic
Although to get round the cost of running another machine I'm going to make a VM running monowall and route my traffic through the VM :)
Tried it before with Microsofts VM but couldnt link the outgoing network adapter due to a bug.
Gonna try again very soon with VMWare.
With a single core A64, CPU utilisation was around 0 to 2% but thats with no traffic.
offtopic/
Click to expand...

wow..who lit the fuse on your tampon?
 
Ghettobox said:
wow..who lit the fuse on your tampon?
Click to expand...
lol, it sort of fell out onto the keyboard. :)
It'll cost me about £100 a year in electric to run a separate machine with monowall, thats why I warbled on about using a VM.
 
lol. I see. My bad.

Then again. Never tried to VM monowall. Can't help you out..then again..I don't think I have ever VM'd any firewall. One more thing to try this winter..lol.
 
Nenu said:
lol, it sort of fell out onto the keyboard. :)
It'll cost me about £100 a year in electric to run a separate machine with monowall, thats why I warbled on about using a VM.
Click to expand...

With monowall you can run it on a single board computer pretty easy and it wouldn't pull much more power then a normal router. Could have it running off 20 watts or so.
 
swatbat said:
With monowall you can run it on a single board computer pretty easy and it wouldn't pull much more power then a normal router. Could have it running off 20 watts or so.
Click to expand...

Yeah I was toying with this and may still do it if VM doesnt work.
I was looking at these from VIA
http://www.commell-sys.com/Product/SBC-miniboard.HTM

My initial plan was to use up spare Athlon XP parts that are lying around.
 
Nenu said:
Yeah I was toying with this and may still do it if VM doesnt work.
I was looking at these from VIA
http://www.commell-sys.com/Product/SBC-miniboard.HTM

My initial plan was to use up spare Athlon XP parts that are lying around.
Click to expand...

You dont need a terribly fast CPU to run a firewall, you could take those old AXP's and underclock them to say 500mhz and they should use much less juice, and still be plenty fast enough to run monowall.
 
duby229 said:
You dont need a terribly fast CPU to run a firewall, you could take those old AXP's and underclock them to say 500mhz and they should use much less juice, and still be plenty fast enough to run monowall.
Click to expand...

Yes I will be doing that if I use my XP spares :)
I could improve on it if I buy a PSU thats more efficient at low power but if I'm going to do that I might as well spend the cash on a cheap embedded solution.
 
my current plan so far is to use my friends old dell - pentium 4 to run monowall. use it for a month or so. get used to the features and then buy a embedded solution.
 
Untangle can run in vmware just fine. In fact you can download a prebuilt vmware appliance for it. Look on their forums for the whole running with vmware thread and howto.
 
a router in a vm sounds like a bad idea... what happens when you have to reboot that computer, everyone on your network loses access?

and what about latencies? the packets will have to be processed through a NIC, some sort of driver bridge to bridge the hardware to an emulated port... and then run the process through a fake cpu that has to be passed on to your real cpu.... and all back out again...


i think VMs are nice to set things up and etc, but for extended use i can't see the benefits other than the obvious (power)


and is 100 pounds a year all that much? i mean really, how much are you paying for your internet service?
 
I would second the nomination for a single board box running monowall. While I generally just use iptable on a basic machine, monowall is really where it is at. A dedicated, flash only, slimline dedicated headless box would really fit the bill. Maybe epia based...say a whopping 500mhz of C3 horsepower..and stuff it in a old nintendo box or something cool.

sorry..I digress.
 
goodcooper said:
a router in a vm sounds like a bad idea... what happens when you have to reboot that computer, everyone on your network loses access?

and what about latencies? the packets will have to be processed through a NIC, some sort of driver bridge to bridge the hardware to an emulated port... and then run the process through a fake cpu that has to be passed on to your real cpu.... and all back out again...


i think VMs are nice to set things up and etc, but for extended use i can't see the benefits other than the obvious (power)


and is 100 pounds a year all that much? i mean really, how much are you paying for your internet service?
Click to expand...

If I reboot my PC then I lose internet access.
I dont route traffic through my PC.
The other PCs will get the VM too if it works.

Do you ask the same question about latencies for people using Wifi or those that put another router/firewall on their connection?
I dont see that will cause any problem.
I've used Smoothwall alongside my current modem/router many times and suffered no problems.
If I was a hardcore twitch shooter then I might want to look at it to not lose any advantage but for all other use, its not an issue.

I'm stumped how using a VM cant be any good long term?
If it works, it works, Its got nothing to do with being nice.
There are more advantages to using a VM like the ability to quickly load another image or restore a backup almost instantly.

£100 is £100 per year less I can spend on my PC.
 
mngl1200 said:
Untangle can run in vmware just fine. In fact you can download a prebuilt vmware appliance for it. Look on their forums for the whole running with vmware thread and howto.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that, I just read the thread again and missed it first time round :)
 
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