Firewall for home

[])ragon_\/oid]

Good day,

So recently I got sick and tired of my D-Link router's fantastic (Read: Horrible) firewall. The issue is, I got so fed up of the limitations that I just decided that it's time to get a proper firewall. So here is my requirements: Needs to be able to do PPPOE connections, Do port forwarding, Allow VPN connections, statistic tracking (Need to see data usage), and handle 25 devices.

So far I tried PFSense, but it managed to crash on me. The Firewall will be ran as a Virtual Machine on a old Duel core system. The old system will connect to a old ADSL modem that is just laying around, gathering dust. Thus, the D-Link will be a Wireless AP.

What firewall would you guys suggest? I'm not looking at blocking any websites.

 

[DsBalsak]

Ipcop, smoothwall try any of those

 

[The_Unbeliever]

Ipcop, smoothwall try any of those

Not sure about IPCop, but Smoothwall will allow PPTP VPN passthrough to any other box or VM hosting the PPTP VPN server.

You can also look at Zerina for Smoothwall (OpenVPN server) although I didn't managed to get it to work.

Smoothwall 3.1 (and newer) works great in a VM (but 3.0 will also work) as it doesn't hog resources, 512Mb is more than enough, but you'll be able to get it working in a minimal 64Mb install (3.0 only).

 

[bdt]

How about marrying an ASUS RT-N16 and EasyTomato firmware, as it includes funky traffic monitoring/handling and OpenVPN server?

 

[])ragon_\/oid]

How about marrying an ASUS RT-N16 and EasyTomato firmware, as it includes funky traffic monitoring/handling and OpenVPN server?

How much does it cost though?

 

[])ragon_\/oid]

Not sure about IPCop, but Smoothwall will allow PPTP VPN passthrough to any other box or VM hosting the PPTP VPN server.

You can also look at Zerina for Smoothwall (OpenVPN server) although I didn't managed to get it to work.

Smoothwall 3.1 (and newer) works great in a VM (but 3.0 will also work) as it doesn't hog resources, 512Mb is more than enough, but you'll be able to get it working in a minimal 64Mb install (3.0 only).

Think I'll give it a try, thank you.

 

[bdt]

How much does it cost though?

/var; pick your poison ..that said, based on my dealer pricing, getting it at ~R1600 is doing well.

 

[MickZA]

The Firewall will be ran as a Virtual Machine on a old Duel core system.

IPCop will work as well.

I'd recommend getting a stand alone install working with whatever solution you opt for before tackling the complexities of a VM.

What else is running on the dual core? Memory and processor specs?

 

[])ragon_\/oid]

Nothing really. 2ghz intel duel core, with 3gb of ram. Thinking about instaling VMWare esxi on it. Might not have enough ram though.

 

[MickZA]

Nothing really. 2ghz intel duel core, with 3gb of ram. Thinking about instaling VMWare esxi on it. Might not have enough ram though.

That should be fine for all the solutions mentioned and moving to ESXi later.

 

[Arthur]

pfSense in an ESXi virtual machine does a good job.

 

[])ragon_\/oid]

Thank you for the suggestions. I've been thinking though, I'll hate having to turn on a computer manually every time the power trips, or after I've turned it off. What about one of these: http://www.scoopdistribution.co.za/product_info.php/routerboard-750-ethernet-ports-p-863? Will I be able to do port forwarding from them, and will I be able to monitor the amount of traffic going through it?

 

[biena]

the mikrotik is awesome, they will be able to do port forwarding and traffic counting.

(basically a embedded linux machine)

read up more here
http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:RouterOS_features

 

[])ragon_\/oid]

the mikrotik is awesome, they will be able to do port forwarding and traffic counting.

(basically a embedded linux machine)

read up more here
http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:RouterOS_features

Any license fees involved when buying one of these?

 

[The_Ogre]

What exactly is wrong with your router's firewall?

 

[])ragon_\/oid]

Well, it just sucks. I changed my whole ip range, and port forwarding isn't working all of a sudden.

 

[biena]

Any license fees involved when buying one of these?

None if you buy the their own device, only if you want to put the routeros on a pc.

http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:License

 

[DrJohnZoidberg]

pfSense is solid as a rock for me, what hardware were you running it on?

Maybe it is an underlying hardware issue causing it to crash? I have a box running at home with 8ish devices, uptime is 4 months. Running one at the office too with 20+ users and uptime also good (except we had an extended power outage the other day).