Jeff and leaf-users

Firstly I apoligize if I offended anyone, although anyone who has tried to
develope a web front end to IPTables will know that Shorewall is not the
place to start.
It overly complex for what it professes to do and after following the LEAF
,mailing list for the last 20 thousand odd emails, I have seen more problems
with newbies and shorewall than any other problems. Its not intuitive and
not very flexible. For example what happens if you want to support more than
3 nics ?

What I have done is not the best solution but it is a solution. I can't wait
to see what the LEAF project comes up with with regards to a web Interface.

You are correct however, Nothing "I" do will get rid of Shorewall, but as
soon as the web interface developement gets underway by the good LEAF
community, it's gone.

Here is a question for the LEAF Project:
Once there is a web interface to LEAF what is going to stop people from
packaging it and selling it as a firewall solution?
It easily rivals many commercial products in its current state and is vastly
superior to many already. In fact I know of at least 2 commercial products
based on LEAF. I'm not sure how the LEAF project feels about that as it's
intentions are pure.

It is the "easy to use interface" that seperates LEAF from commercial
products! For example as a pure packetfiltering firewall IPTables is
superior to the Checkpoint firewall1 but FW1 is massive , Why ? cos of the
"easy to use interface" (and subtle marketing).

I have seen questions about commercial support for LEAF already and wonder
how long till it becomes a commercial project like SNORT, Mosquito etc.

The project goals have already changed to a cdrom based boot method and more
and more folk are using compact flash or hard drives to extend the
functionality of their firewalls. Floppys are a terribly unreliable medium.

checkout http://www.bbiagent.net/en/index.html as an alternative java
interface. These guys are way ahead in this game.
Unfortunatly the connection is not encrypted and it does not support
freeswan yet or more than 2 nics.

Peter Robinson
Senior Security Engineer - Sydney
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Newmiller [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Sunday, 1 September 2002 2:22 AM
To: Peter Robinson
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [leaf-user] Webbased configuration


On Sun, 1 Sep 2002, Peter Robinson wrote:

> Hi there.
>
> A suggestion if I may...
>
> What you are all suggesting has already been 3 quarters written in
Mosquito.
> I will require porting to English (I have already done this) and the
> abolishment of the abomination known as shorewall.

I guess you have expressed your opinion about Shorewall now, but nothing
you do will result in the "abolishment" of that package.  If what you do
is demonstrably better than Shorewall, then that package may get
displaced in some cases, but name-calling is only likely to raise hackles.

I would recommend that you review the Project Goals stated at
http://leaf.sourceforge.net.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeff Newmiller                        The     .....       .....  Go Live...
DCN:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>        Basics: ##.#.       ##.#.  Live Go...
                                      Live:   OO#.. Dead: OO#..  Playing
Research Engineer (Solar/Batteries            O.O#.       #.O#.  with
/Software/Embedded Controllers)               .OO#.       .OO#.  rocks...2k
---------------------------------------------------------------------------



-------------------------------------------------------
This sf.net email is sponsored by: OSDN - Tired of that same old
cell phone?  Get a new here for FREE!
https://www.inphonic.com/r.asp?r=sourceforge1&refcode1=vs3390
------------------------------------------------------------------------
leaf-user mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/leaf-user
SR FAQ: http://leaf-project.org/pub/doc/docmanager/docid_1891.html

Reply via email to