IPCop vs. Smoothwall vs. ClearOS

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m1k3072

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Hi all

I'd like some feedback regarding the above 3 firewall distro's. I have experimented with all 3 and found ClearOS's setup/interface/features to be the best. Which do you prefer and why?
 
clear is clearly the best. all of them pretty much offer a snazzy gooey to the same linux stack. iptables, bind9 dns, openssh, and it goes on and on. i prefer whipping open a terminal and setting up / adjusting things "manually". you really get to understand how things work if you do that for long enough. theres always some logging requirement that only a shell script and good ol' log daemon can achieve.

but for the menial tasks. ****. clear helps tons i suppose.
 
I've tried both Ipcop and Smoothwall, and chose Ipcop only for the Update Accelerator plugin to proxy the windows, linux and antivirus updates.
 
ClearOS seems to be developing at a more rapid pace than IPCop, who haven't released anything in over a year. Smoothwall is nice enough, but it lacks many features you need in a mainly Windows environment, you get those in the paid versions. ClearOS has a pretty good web interface, but the base distro itself is huge compared to Smoothwall and IPCop.

I had major problems trying to get Windows 7 activated through all of these firewall solutions, in the end I had to give up. Sometimes it's best to create your own firewall, but you do lose that custom written GUI, which is useful if you are not clued up about Linux and firewalls in general.
 
I haven't given untangle a try before, thanks! I'm still happy with ClearOS. Been using it at home and at the office for over a month now and haven't had any hiccups.

Back when I still used ClarkConnect, CentOS's predecssor, I remember having trouble with activitaion when static ip's and user authentication was enabled, set to transparent and let the clients activate and reverted.
 
Just set up a little firewall box at home running ClearOS and was really easy to set up. So far I'm pretty impressed, set up is really simple.

I first tired Smoothwall but my NICs were not supported out of the box and didn't feel like hassles. Can somebody who has used both comment on the main differences between the two and why you would choose one over the other?

I tried pfSense too but not as full featured as ClearOS. Any other recommendations?
 
Using ClearOS for about 2 years now and no major issues. Tried Zentyal as well but had problems with the port forwarding. Endian I haven't used yet but looks pretty interesting if you're after another suggestion.
 
DrJohnZoidberg said:
Just set up a little firewall box at home running ClearOS and was really easy to set up. So far I'm pretty impressed, set up is really simple.

I first tired Smoothwall but my NICs were not supported out of the box and didn't feel like hassles. Can somebody who has used both comment on the main differences between the two and why you would choose one over the other?

I tried pfSense too but not as full featured as ClearOS. Any other recommendations?
Click to expand...

I'm using smoothwall. Basically SWE is a stripped-down hardened Linux distro, with only the bare neccessities available for a firewall. Great if you've got an unused P2 with 128Mb RAM lying around doing nothing. Also if you're scarce on resources, yet want a virtual machine firewall...

ClearOS, on the other hand, have much more features added, for example, file and print sharing. Great for those who are not willing to sacrifice a box just for firewalling.

I prefer SWE at work because of the low resource requirement, which means I can install it on any low-spec (P2, P3, P4 etc) PC with 512Mb RAM and be up and running in minutes should any existing SWE firewall crash (HDD crash, etc) for any reason.

I'm about to switch over to ClearOS at home as I need some storage space. Been planning for this implementation for a long time now.

I'm also using ClearOS as a mail server on two sites without any mayor issues, barring that with the one site which's using fetchmail, the fetchmail daemon dies for some arb reason, and need a restart, but that is so seldom it's hardly a major ache. The other site's been running for more than a year, 30+ users with mailboxes and VPN and the such. Rock solid and reliable, never let me down so far :cool:
 
And another thing - at work I'm running a WAP on a purple segment with great success. For this Smoothwall is great - network segmentation with limited access between the two.

I haven't tried network segmentation with ClearOS out yet...

I'm talking about physical segmentation, not just slapping a couple of VLAN's up...
 
We ran Smoothwall, and it was fine. But then we had a fresh network upgrade, and decided Smoothwall missed a few features. ClearOS worked fine, but the interface was a but resource heavy, and overly complicated for non l linux/firewall people. We also battled getting VPN to work the way we wanted.

We finally settled on Endian Firewall. Fantastic solution. Works pretty much out the box, sets up easily. Has one or two subtle things to sort out, but what it brings to the table, it's great.
 
What I said previously - go with what you're comfortable with :)

By the by, ClearOS can also be installed in console mode (no GUI on the server monitor). However, the web interface will be a bit "sluggish" if the PC is slow. Agreed on the VPN - it is not always plain sailing, but once you get it up and running, it works nicely.
 
ClearOS in my books, but custom build in various instances.

Listen to The_Librarian that is solid advice.

No big Untangle supporter... Although that were older versions, I’m about to test the new version (9.4) in a little experiment…
 
When I was lookimg for a solution I found ClearOS to be the best.
Then I discovered Kerio Control and been using it for 2 or 3 years.
At the time, the only thing ClearOS lacked compared to Kerio was real time bandwidth usage by host which is important to me.
 
The_Librarian said:
I'm using smoothwall. Basically SWE is a stripped-down hardened Linux distro, with only the bare neccessities available for a firewall. Great if you've got an unused P2 with 128Mb RAM lying around doing nothing. Also if you're scarce on resources, yet want a virtual machine firewall...

ClearOS, on the other hand, have much more features added, for example, file and print sharing. Great for those who are not willing to sacrifice a box just for firewalling.

I prefer SWE at work because of the low resource requirement, which means I can install it on any low-spec (P2, P3, P4 etc) PC with 512Mb RAM and be up and running in minutes should any existing SWE firewall crash (HDD crash, etc) for any reason.

I'm about to switch over to ClearOS at home as I need some storage space. Been planning for this implementation for a long time now.

I'm also using ClearOS as a mail server on two sites without any mayor issues, barring that with the one site which's using fetchmail, the fetchmail daemon dies for some arb reason, and need a restart, but that is so seldom it's hardly a major ache. The other site's been running for more than a year, 30+ users with mailboxes and VPN and the such. Rock solid and reliable, never let me down so far :cool:
Click to expand...

I'm liking ClearOS - have it running on a low powered Atom 1.6Ghz with a gig of ram and it runs fine. Just run in to two problems today though:

1. Connecting to external FTP sites locked up the firewall and caused the ppp connection to totally disconnect. Haven't completely found the cause but after removing Intrusion detection/prevention and the bandwidth control apps it works fine. Don't know which one is causing the issue and why.
2. Only getting 100Mbit on my LAN with a Realtek RTL8111/8168B card. Have found something on the clearos forums and installed the "correct" driver, just need to reboot now and check.

I do wish I could monitor the bandwidth on each connection on the LAN more efficiently though, but not really a major issue for me. The squid reporting is a bonus because it's really a hassle setting up decent reporting for squid. Also wish you could remove apps from the web console instead of having to drop to a console every time.
 
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