“Whether you run a small business or large corporation — or just have a desktop PC at home — if you’re connected to the Internet for any amount of time, you need a firewall to keep your data safe. People with ill intentions will try everything from stealing your credit card data, to exploiting open mail relays for spam, or even manipulating potential (and unwitting) participants in Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.” Read the interesting Linux firewall roundup article at UnixReview.
Linux Firewall Roundup: SuSE, Mandrake & Coyote Linux
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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god i love iptables, so much better than the experimental pf
Having run a firewall under Linux for a couple years, I tried out OpenBSD 2.9 because I was giving my router a hardware upgrade, and thought since I’d be reinstalling Linux anyway, I’d try OpenBSD out. IMO, OpenBSD was a lot easier to set up, far less work on my end. Plus, it’s incredibly secure. What more could you want out of a firewall/router?
What are the benefits of using Linux over a hardware solution? I’ve used Asante and Linksys firewall/routers without any problem. They have user-friendly, browser-based setups, more features than I need, and you don’t have to wait for them to reboot after a crash, not to mention the cost savings. Linux may be free, but in a few months a firewall/router will pay for itself in electricity savings over a computer running 24/7.
Yea a linksys firewall will save you some kW/hrs on your bill, not that much, but it’s a valid point.
You can get a small system though for a little more money than one of those firewalls, like the ones the emBSD (embsd.suspicous.org) project list on their pages. This way you have the best of both worlds. You get a very small footprint system with low power requirments, and it’s running your favorite operating system.
The benifit to that is in addition to already knowing how to setup and maintain the system you have full control over it. With the linksys type solutions you are limited to what their firmware can support, and when a security vulnerability is found you have to wait for them to fix it (and it’s not like security issues in commercial DSL modems / firewalls don’t exist.)
As for “Why Linux?” I find myself asking that everyday, but then again I’m a BSD person so it’s to be expected.
http://www.embsd.org/ or http://embsd.suspicious.org/
because linux is superior to bsd in every way, deal with it.