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Running a firewall on each of your systems can be an administrative nightmare plus taking up unnecessary resources. My cup of tea is a dedicated box specifically for the reason.

I have been researching on open source “appliance” like firewalls and the following seem to be the best choices. All of these firewalls offer features similar to paid firewalls and include a web GUI (except Shorewall) plus much, much more.

1. m0n0wall

m0n0wall is my favorite out of the 5 choices. It was the easiest firewall I have set up besides the imaging process of the hard drive. At 5MB for installation, it doesn’t get much more efficient. I am currently running it on 512MB RAM and it’s only using 50k!

2. pfSense

fSense is based on m0n0wall and has added features. I still have this one on my list to test, but I chose m0n0wall over pfSense for the fact that m0n0wall would seem to run more efficiently. It is a matter of features vs. performance.

3. Smoothwall

Smoothwall has the best web GUI out of any of these. Take a look at some screenshots here. I couldn’t use this one for my latest project becuase there was no way to setup 1 to 1 NAT from within the web GUI. This one is still pretty slim at 50MB installation.

4. IPCop

It has been a while since I tried IPCop. It seemed to get the job done and the web GUI seemed very similar to Smoothwall at the time. IPCop is close to 50MB installation.

5. Shorewall

Hacker Alert: Shorewall does not include a WebGUI, but you can manage it with the latest version of the Linux web GUI Webmin. Shorewall is configured from a command line within your linux distro of choice so don’t be expecting to use this one if you don’t want to get your hand dirty! However, it is VERY granular, flexible, and powerful.

I hope that you will give these a try the next time you setup a new firewall.

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3 Comments

  1. Munich Unix » Linux: Top 5 Open Source Firewalls Says:
    November 16th, 2007 at 8:02 am

    [...] read more | digg story [...]

  2. Danny Says:
    May 15th, 2008 at 11:21 pm

    I have been using IpCOP for about 3 years now. Recently I’ve been trying out Endian.

    What’s your thought on Endian?

  3. Shane Says:
    May 17th, 2008 at 8:04 pm

    Danny,

    Thanks for the comment. I haven’t heard of Endian before you pointed it out to me. I will be taking a look. Thanks!

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