On Jun 4, 2009, at 3:24 PM, Paul Mooring wrote:
Maybe most people would disagree with me on this but I don't think there's too many advantages to runnning IPcop over a standard linux distro in the first place if you're only looking to use it as a router. Any router or firewall distro is more or less an iptables frontend anyhow. To do it make sure "net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1" is in / etc/sysctl.conf and there should be an iptables rule for nat, run iptables-save and look for a rule that says either -j SNAT --to- source or -j MASQUERADE, if your existing iptables rules don't have that run 'iptables -t nat -I POSTROUTING -o $EXTIF -j MASQUERADE' where $EXTIF is your external interface (probably eth0 or eth1), and then you have a fully functional router.
If you know what you're doing, I agree there isn't any difference. But the set of people who might want a good firewall/router is much larger than the set of people who are really comfortable with iptables, and that's where IPCop & other distros like it fit in really well.
There are other benefits besides iptables ease. Any extra/unwanted packages which come in a standard distro, but which aren't needed for a router, have been removed (and are therefore not exploitable). Configuring multiple interfaces for multiple networks is really simple. Etc...
alex
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