On 5 Dec 2002 at 14:48, Lauren Horn wrote: > I have heard of smoothwall, from many satisfied customers. I have > also heard from several who find the support climate to be extremely > abusive. Those people have recommended a product called IPCOP, which > looks to be well-supported, though I have not tried it. (ipcop.org)
I'll echo the above comments. I use IPcop for my home and office, in one it's running on a P-133 and in the other on a 486. You download and burn an ISO, and you have to be able to boot the PC from the CD to install it. You also need to have two supported NICs, but the list is pretty good. There are a couple of tricks to setting it up with two NE2000 clone cards but once it's running it's pretty bulletproof. www.ipcop.org I also use Freesco for smaller environments. I have an antique 486 running a floppy-only (no HDD) with Freesco 0.27 and it works fine to share an ISDN line for one office. I'd like to replace the box with a nicer firewall but the silly thing won't break ;-). Freesco 0.30 was just released but I haven't played with it. www.freesco.org The nice thing about both Freesco and IPCop when compared to a roll-your-own OpenBSD firewall is that both come with web control panels so you can control the boxes remotely with browsers once they're up and running. You should set up the web control panels so you can only do so from the internal network, of course, but for *nix newbies setting up and running either of these "canned" firewall distribs should be easier than setting up an OBSD firewall (which I have tried several times ;-). The "support" for newbies on the OBSD discussion list borders on the hostile -- the list is more for OBSD users than for newbies. It's not as bad as the flames for "freeloaders" that you'll get on the smoothwall list, but before you ask a newbie question on the OBSD list you'd better have done your homework (and put on your asbestos undies). Angus -- Angus Scott-Fleming GeoApps, Tucson, Arizona 1-520-290-5038 / fax 1-208-248-3124 http://www.geoapps.com/ AIM: AngusWSF ICQ: 165646506 --------------------------------------------------------- -- Angus Scott-Fleming GeoApps, Tucson, Arizona 1-520-290-5038 / fax 1-208-248-3124 http://www.geoapps.com/ AIM: AngusWSF ICQ: 165646506 --------------------------------------------------------- ------ You are subscribed as [email protected] Archives: http://www.swynk.com/sitesearch/search.asp To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
