Is Smoothwall a good firewall?

[LawnBoy]

Pros/cons? Documentation looks good but I'd like to hear from people who've used it.

If you've not used it, what's your favorite flavor of firewall?

 

[danomac]

I've used smoothwall for 3 years. I've not had any problems with it... it even dealt with a DDOS I had for a couple weeks (dang ISP didn't want to do anything about it...)

I've installed Smoothwall in a few places, and have had good results all around.

The only downside with it is if you use its hosts file for name resolution, I haven't bothered to figure out how to refresh the list without restarting.

 

[Castor66]

When I joined this company they were using unlicensed Microsoft ISA server. When I looked at the price of it I almost fainted. I looked around for a replacement and found Smoothwall. I re-used 2 really old PII-500's and installed Smoothwall, Advanced Web Proxy and the IPSEC upgrade within 45 minutes. I love it. I've had 0 problems with it since I put it in and would have no hesitation in recommending it to anyone else.

Another advantage to it is the superb user community. If you have any problems you can find a solution in the forums and some of the guys will even develop custom modifications for you.

In our production enviornment we use a combination of Sonicwall and Nokia/Checkpoint appliances. I can say that the feature set on smoothwall is pretty much on a par with the Sonicwall and is MUCH easier to manage than Checkpoint!

 

[LawnBoy]

Castor66:
I'm looking at Smoothwall with squid and DansGuardian. Can I get it all loaded on one pc or do I need the smoothie on it's own box?

 

[Castor66]

Smoothie with Advanced Web Proxy (i.e. Squid) and DansGuardian will all run on the same box. Proxy and DG are add-ons to Somoothwall.

http://community.smoothwall.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11083

http://community.smoothwall.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8488

 

[w1nn3r]

you might also look at m0n0wall,

http://www.m0n0.ch/wall/