On Saturday 27 August 2005 13:11, Sid Boyce wrote:
I'm perplexed at the lack of response to me suggesting Astaro, it's free, you don't have to believe the advertising blurb, you can go through a demo online that is real-world. It supports the addition of WIFI. It's all chrooted so there is no way of manually altering, copying or installing anything as it says you don't have a hard drive or a floppy when you try. The config can be backed up to the box you are using to admin the firewall. The online updates are quite regular, no time limits on the software and it's painless to upgrade, besides being arguably the best darn Linux firewall. There is a quite active forum. The only problem I had with it was with ssh from the outside, but that was due to my lack of understanding of NAT rules, I just get confused as to what is source and what is destination, but the forum helped me out. I was looking for a way I could suggest to Astaro they include VPN, anti-virus and Content filtering in the free version or to somehow produce a cheap version, may be they could allow the full version for free personal use as the downloaded version has to be paid for if used by companies, which really means they get a license that turns on the full version functionality. As with many Linux based stuff like TomTom GPS's and some firewalls that will only work with Windows, their on-line seminar needs IE when I tried attending online, IE under crossover office also didn't work, so I gave them serious grief over that, they kindly sent me a PDF version of it.
I know it's not Linux, but BSD, however I've found M0n0wall to be a superb firewall, it's small enough to boot from compact flash, supports VPNs, traffic Shaping, captive portal and will also act as a wireless access point. It's ideal for running headless on standard PC hardware or dedicated appliances like the Soekris and Wrap boards. http://m0n0.ch/wall -- David Bottrill david@bottrill.org www.bottrill.org Registered Linux user number 330730 Internet SIP Phone: 1-747-244-2699