Smoothwall + Mywireless = :) or :( or ?

G

Gooku

Senior Member
Joined
Jan 25, 2004
Messages
817
Reaction score
59
Location
[email protected]
My Techi is persuading me to try out Smoothwall (We are currently on outpost-firewall and happy)

Therefor I have decided to take maximum time on this one & seek some opinion from members have experience with smoothwall.

I believe the major advantage is that smoothwall needs little or no maintainance and it is open-source.


P.S Anyone has a working spare ethernet cable wanting to sell ,can pls PM or email me.
 
I know WBS is using smoothwall for some of their pc connected to iburst, 4 of them particulary, and it works well
 
Gooku, it should be noted that IPCop is similar to Smoothwall and has the option of installing on SCSI drives, which Smoothwall doesn't.

They also update more frequently :-

http://www.ipcop.org/

I prefer Smoothwall personally, but IPCop is just as popular.
 
Jon Snow said:
Another option would be http://www.clarkconnect.org/ also pretty good has 2 branchs a free version and a paid version.
Click to expand...

Ah ..yea. I can't say that it'd be BAD to go for that 'un cos I went for SME Server first http://www.contribs.org/ and got all the happiness I wanted from that, mostly in the directions of being more actively updated, more versatile and less bolshy with what they're allowing you to get.

Also I'm definitely fond of the community activity with plugins- case in point, see http://sme.swerts-knudsen.dk/howto.htm. Then there's the MONDO list of contribs to tweak the daylights outta your SME box at http://contribs.org/modules/mylinks/viewcat.php?cid=58 ..and just for the sake of being obsessive-compulsively compleat, there're commercial and GPL contribs at http://www.dungog.net/sme/products.php

But both of these are so way beyond the scope of the original question I reckon they're a discussion unto themselves. As to whether SW is worth it- danged tootin'! I've got 2x boxen cobbled together to use for pinch-hit routers when left without alternatives and the one I'm gonna leave together (and not take apart) is a pentium-233 with 64MB RAM 'n 4GB HDD. THAT's how far down the food chain compatibile hardware can go. I reckon I'm gonna play with the other one (Cele 333) and see if I can get m0n0wall to play AP for me with the addition of a WiFi NIC.
 
Last edited:
As much as it hurt, I was forced to turn my Smoothwall box off last night permanently. I've only had MyWireless for 6 weeks, but in that time I've had to format and reinstall my Smoothie 3 times because it keeps screwing up. 2 days ago, I disconnected and reconnected the Smoothwall PPPoE session and it refused to connect to the Sentech network. The lights on the modem flash but it never authenticates. I've rebooted the machine a million times but it just refuses to connect.

When I used 56k dial-up on my Smoothie, I never had a problem. Since going to PPPoE, all I've had is **** :( If anyone has some advice, I'd greatly appreciate it!
 
thewanted_ said:
As much as it hurt, I was forced to turn my Smoothwall box off last night permanently. (snip)

When I used 56k dial-up on my Smoothie, I never had a problem. Since going to PPPoE, all I've had is **** :( If anyone has some advice, I'd greatly appreciate it!
Click to expand...

My experience (as a *NIX n00b) with SW has been fab, I've had smoothies up on a temp basis in 3 different sites and taken them down only when no longer needed so it's NOT that SW fails with MyWi, I believe your hassles are local, be it your hardware or something you're not setting up right.

And I know from hardware hassles cos my 1st smoothie was a *dog* to get going ..until we found that I was trying to use a FUBAR NIC. Once we changed to a good 'un, it was all good. So, can you 1st confirm that your hardware is ALL known good and working (specially the NICs)? After that, it's usually follow-your-nose stuff to setup- there *are* n00bs-aplenty getting this right afterall!
 
When I had smoothwall hooked up to a mysuckness modem, whenever I had issues, I'd hook it back up to USB and the windows software to find it wasn't smoothwall, but was Sucktech.

I've never had a single issue with smoothwall, which is more than can be said about the issues I had with MyCareLess.

TheWanted - make sure all the hardware on your smoothwall is up to scratch - I had TONS of issues on one smoothwall install, only to find that :

a.) The old 1gig HD I was using had finally pretty much kicked the bucket
b.) One of the old ISA NIC's I was using was very dodgy

I also found that I had to remove pretty much ALL of the PPPoE options in the ppp settings. Uncheck every single box.

All you need set is :-

Interface: PPPoE

Username & Password

Method: PAP or CHAP (mmm, pap en vlies) :D

Leave everything else as the defaults with no boxes checked.
You can have DNS entries if you want.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the replies guys :)

When I used dial-up on my Smoothie, it worked flawlessly. Since then I've installed an Intel based NIC for the RED interface so I suppose thats probably whats causing all my grief. Its just very weird that it will work perfectly for quite a while and then just die.

Time to find another Realtek-based NIC :(
 
thewanted:
When u have these problems, does smoothwall tell you its connected, and your disconnect button doesn't seem to do anything??

if this is your case, let me know, I've written a script to correct the issue, it occurs when the modem loses reception while smoothwall is authenticating.
 
Hey dorris

Smoothwall doesn't say its connected. It just keeps saying "dialling" the whole time :(

But I have noticed that problem you mentioned! When I eventually get a working NIC, I'll give you a shout :)

Thanks
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X