Interesting discussion.
Thanks for a fairly well rounded (despite kicking off a fairly large thread)
description.
> ipf strengths (in my eyes):
> + free.
No, it's not free, you're losing your civil liberties when you use open source
software, just ask microsoft. *snigger*
> + stable. (*)
Not a lot I can say, never had stability problems with IPF, unlike some other
opensource firewall software (I once had the misfortune of trying to use
OpenBSD 3.0 / pf), then again, I don't have the testing facilities to be
adventurous with the version I'm using.
> + config file is easy to understand.
Given basic (or advanced) networking knowledge.
> + rules are easy to implement.
And extend, and organise.
> + features
Good features, bad features, must be good, as it's in the pro's section.
> + large user community.
A handful of vocal people on a mail list, who are for the most part, willing
to help anyone with problems.
> + multiple OS support.
> + good FAQ content. :*)
>
> ipf weaknesses (in my eyes):
> - managability across multiple machines.
I'd probably add lack of support for a 'failover', this is one thing which the
big commercial guys seem to provide, which IPF doesn't, and about the only
reason I'd choose to go with a commercial firewall.
> - developer resources.
I'd say that for developer resources, IPF comes with clean readable source
code, I don't understand how IPF comes out worse than any commericial
firewall on this.
> - releases are tested by users. (*)
I'm not sure this is a bad thing, It's more a generic problem with Open
Source, in that you require a large userbase, which contains people who are
willing to spend the time to test your software, and track down bugs for you.
I'd say IPF has this, though, as a firewall, it's a lot harder to test, than
say, the next beta of KDE or Gnome.
> [ Lack of a GUI ]
Like you said, you prefer the text based interface, and I'm entirely in
agreement, but unfortunately not everyone feels the same. (I'm tempted to say
if you want to use a GUI to configure a firewall, you probably shouldn't be
configuring a firewall, but that'd just be flamebait.)
It would be interesting to see a performance comparison between IPF, and some
commercial firewalls.
I'm not convinced that it runs much slower than the big boys, but then, no-one
on this list seems to have a gigabit network to play with, at least I've not
seen anyone mention this on the mailing list.
Then again, if you have access to a gigabit network, chances are, you'd get
shot if you 'played' with it, but I think this is a generic problem with
firewall software, that it's hard to setup a realistic performance test, or
at least expensive if something goes wrong ;)
-Antony
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