IPcop, smoothwall or mikrotik?

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headstrong

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Hi guys

I am a linux noob but I can learn fast!

I want to setup a linux box/mikrotik in order to manage a small network

I only need it to do minimal things and a GUI would be great!

Here's the basic requirments:

monitor internet usage
internet load balancing
Limit download/upload speed
Easy to learn!!!!!!
GUI would be appreciated

a "howTo' wiki would also be useful so that I could get a basic idea of each of them!

The reason i'm asking is because I have and adsl line and so does my friend....we want to split the costs with a few mates and learn some networking skills/experiment at the same time because we both want to go into IT and managing a small network between a few friends would give us the competitive advantage once we start applying for jobs!

Thanks guys!
 
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Btw, Mikrotik is a company and they make a OS named RouterOS used for Routerboards. www.routerboard.com.

Get ClarkConnect Linux.
ClarkConnect Community Edition 4.0 HTTP Download

What Is ClarkConnect?

ClarkConnect is a powerful yet easy-to-use software solution that transforms off-the-shelf PC hardware into a dedicated Internet gateway and server. The software is a secure, reliable and cost effective solution.
Features

Our software offers a feature-rich server solution:

* Internet Gateway
* Firewall
* VPN
* E-mail
* Bandwidth and P2P Manager
* Multiwan
* Intrusion Prevention
* Web and FTP Servers
* Antispam/Antivirus
* Content Filtering
* File and Print Services
* Data backup
* Groupware

Screenshot 1
Screenshot 2
Screenshot 3
 
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Could you please ellaborate on ClarcConnect?

How much does it cost?
Can it monitor internet usage per user login?
Windows or linux?

Sounds exciting tho!
 
I will download the program soon! looks great!

I quick question does it need a mysql database??? coz I've tried to setup a mysql database but with no success? :(
 
on 2nd thoughts 484 megz looks enormous!!! end of the month here we come!
 
The Smoothwall community forums is more active.

If you're looking at only a firewall, then go for either SW or IPCop.

If you look at extra functionality, then SME Server (www.contribs.org) or ClarkConnect is the way to go.

SME Server is open source and free.

HTH

Libs
 
from my experience

Have registered just to say this.

Go for mikrotik.

What is SMOOTHWALL.
I am working in IT company and I have to deal with smothwalls every day, they are the biggest pain in d arse I ever had in my networking career!
Why?
Their web GUI is so badly designed, you find your self scrolling and ticking boxes all day, restarting services after each change.
Loosing settings after browsing away from page, non standard networking terms that you have to guess what they do and experiment with before implementing anything.
Have to wait 5 minutes for reboot plus 3 minutes for Web gui service to start (thats 8 minutes downtime, sometimes 10 depending on config)
Hardware migration? You can forget about this, save/restore settings only works for one system.
Smoothwall is actually just a WEB GUI that goes on top of ordinary free Linux, that is all to it. They dont really improve or optimise linux, all they are busy with is aggressive marketing and support because their product is not stable and needs lots of advertising since not many people using it.
Then they charge ridiculous unjustified money for their racks and license alone so that people think that if its expensive it must be good! It is not a product to use in corporate or even small business environment. This system taking roots from home brew, tweaked linux with simple web interface.

MIKROTIK
Have been using m0n0wall, StarOS, MS ISA, Smoothwall and other WEB gui iptables based firewalls.
Now using Mikrotik for 5 years and it is very good, they don't need to advertise as much because once you start using it you can not use anything else, its admin paradise!
Their online WiKi and forums are incomparable with any other products I have used, it is very human oriented, not like Cisco or Juniper.
Mikrotik have redone and optimised linux throughout (drivers, kernel, CLI etc) in such a way that it is all running in real time, all settings take immediate effect. (don't have to restart all network service for just an IP settings to take effect like in Smoothwall nonsense!)
It boots in about 10 to 30 seconds, even with some crazy content proxy based management configuration.
It has very good graphical iptables representation (with mangle, nating, chains...etc)
It has fantastic GUI where everything fits on the screen, everything is in real time, copy/paste rules, configs, interfaces.... so on... have to try it your self)
Super CLI, very intuitive like in cisco or juniper (tab tab and you are there) (not like a plain bash in smoothwall)
Mikrotik has its own scripting language with witch you can do almost everything, starting from automatic failover and ending with antenna alignment with audio indication.
Oh yeah, forgot to mention prise wise they are very moderate!

Hope you guys and girls make a right decision after this,

Thank you)
 
mir said:
I am working in IT company and I have to deal with smothwalls every day, they are the biggest pain in d arse I ever had in my networking career!
Why?
Their web GUI is so badly designed, you find your self scrolling and ticking boxes all day, restarting services after each change.
Loosing settings after browsing away from page, non standard networking terms that you have to guess what they do and experiment with before implementing anything.
Have to wait 5 minutes for reboot plus 3 minutes for Web gui service to start (thats 8 minutes downtime, sometimes 10 depending on config)
Hardware migration? You can forget about this, save/restore settings only works for one system.
Smoothwall is actually just a WEB GUI that goes on top of ordinary free Linux, that is all to it. They dont really improve or optimise linux, all they are busy with is aggressive marketing and support because their product is not stable and needs lots of advertising since not many people using it.
Then they charge ridiculous unjustified money for their racks and license alone so that people think that if its expensive it must be good! It is not a product to use in corporate or even small business environment. This system taking roots from home brew, tweaked linux with simple web interface.
Click to expand...

Then there's something wrong with your smoothwall setup. Either a faulty HDD or faulty RAM.

Never had any of those issues with any of my smoothies ever.

Except when I tried a batch of old POS workstations - they all returned weird errors, so I discarded those POS workstations.

FYI - Smoothwall uses a stripped-down Linux version to be more secure.

You get two versions, the Express version, which is a community supported version, and is free.

Then there's the Commercial version, the paid-for version. The paid-for version will give you access to live support, whereas the community version does not.

Let me conclude by saying that no firewall distro is perfect, choose the distro which you find easy to use, and protects your network without any hassles :)
 
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mir said:
Have registered just to say this.

Go for mikrotik.
Click to expand...

+1 !

Learnt how to use Mikrotik as an absolute noob a while ago, and they have so many useful how to's on their site! Used to use an old AMD 450 as a usage monitor, Web Proxy and PPPOE Client / Server for a small wireless setup :)
 
The_Librarian said:
Let me conclude by saying that no firewall distro is perfect, choose the distro which you find easy to use, and protects your network without any hassles :)
Click to expand...
Totally right there)
If some Firewall distro does it for you then sure... don't fix whats aint broken...
 
Now whatever gave you that idea? :p

If you have a spare multihomed machine lying around, then I'd suggest something like Smoothwall or ClarkConnect since they're free...

I personally run MS Threat Management Gateway at home, but thats just because it gives me fancy toys to play with... :)
 
I'm using Untangle firewall at home. It's very easy to use and you can do just about anything like QOS, VPN, user limiting, block/allow ports,DHCP, etc, etc. you can also login to the box via web interface.



http://www.google.co.za/url?sa=t&so...DxJrRHiOk9KzqFNag&sig2=HQ-RQP1zqzdzdDZHYIF83w

It also have good web filtiring and gives you a nice daily and monthly report on internet usage per pc. Try it and you won't look back.

How to get it working.
1. Download the iso
2. burn to cd
3. Boot from cd
4. follow instructions on screen.
5. setup account, etc etc.
6. Enjoy
 
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I use IPCop, and love it... however it hasn't been updated in a LONG time.

I would consider looking at Smoothwall (http://www.smoothwall.org).

Others you can look at are pfsense (http://www.pfsense.org), but that is freebsd based or zeroshell (http://www.zeroshell.org). All should be relatively easy to set up.

I'm considering moving over to smoothwall, but want to try making an addon for it to allow multiple pppoe with our local based routing - something gui based, and not hacked together shell scripts (although they work very well).

I'll +1 untangle as well.
 
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nelis said:
I'm using Untangle firewall at home. It's very easy to use and you can do just about anything like QOS, VPN, user limiting, block/allow ports,DHCP, etc, etc. you can also login to the box via web interface.



http://www.google.co.za/url?sa=t&so...DxJrRHiOk9KzqFNag&sig2=HQ-RQP1zqzdzdDZHYIF83w

It also have good web filtiring and gives you a nice daily and monthly report on internet usage per pc. Try it and you won't look back.

How to get it working.
1. Download the iso
2. burn to cd
3. Boot from cd
4. follow instructions on screen.
5. setup account, etc etc.
6. Enjoy
Click to expand...

I'm a huge fan of Untangle, +10
 
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