Smoothwall is awesome

airbornflghtairbornflght Houston, TX Icrontian
edited September 2008 in Science & Tech
I'm running a 333mhz Pentium II with 256 mb of ram and it is pretty damn awesome.

The install wasn't free of issues and tracking down documentation took a little hunting, but once I got to the web interface everything was cake.

I'm running a 12/2 dedicated connection supporting around 40 computer clients and 20 game consoles. So far though I've only seen the connection get to 2 mbits.

I was using a consumer netgear router that literally choked when more than four people got online. Now my smoothie box doesn't even blink when I intentionally hammer the line. I think we have the biggest baddest network out of all the fraternities on campus.:bigggrin:

The thing I love the most is all the logging this thing does. It will make it very easy to locate the problem when an issue occurs. I will be able to identify bandwidth hogs if the issue should arise, but I also have the traffic shaping enabled; which looks promising.

If you can't tell I'm really exciting about smoothwall and it totally shattered my expectations. Talk about delivering on a promise. I can't wait for version 4.:smiles: Now if I could only find a windows sidebar widget to monitor my smoothie that would take the cake.

Comments

  • CycloniteCyclonite Tampa, Florida Icrontian
    edited August 2008
    I used Smoothwall for a year and a half before switching to IPCop. It's an amazing piece of software. I never saw it choke once, and I'm very good at hammering my connection.
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited August 2008
    Why did you switch to IPCop? I've heard about other people switching, so I'm curious.
  • KwitkoKwitko Sheriff of Banning (Retired) By the thing near the stuff Icrontian
    edited August 2008
    I'm setting up m0n0wall for a client.
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited August 2008
    I've used monowall. It's a bitch to configure, but you can't deny the absolute lockdown that OpenBSD provides.
  • KwitkoKwitko Sheriff of Banning (Retired) By the thing near the stuff Icrontian
    edited August 2008
    I did a test run and didn't find it any more difficult than any other setup. I suppose I could have chosen any of them.
  • CycloniteCyclonite Tampa, Florida Icrontian
    edited August 2008
    primesuspect wrote:
    Why did you switch to IPCop? I've heard about other people switching, so I'm curious.

    There wasn't any one thing in particular that made me switch. I had a few people tell me "IPCop is so much better.." and I just wanted to determine that on my own. Honestly, for the way I use it, it's no different from Smoothwall.

    I like the IPCop GUI better, and it does a couple things without hacks that Smoothwall didn't do. For instance, the outside IP address is shown right on the status screen. Smoothwall didn't seem to do that out-of-the-box.

    It also seems like there's a larger community following and add-ons available for IPCop than Smoothwall. It's nice to know I have those options if I need them.

    Overall, if you're happy with Smoothwall and don't ever think "I wish it did more," then there's no reason to switch to IPCop, in my opinion.
  • airbornflghtairbornflght Houston, TX Icrontian
    edited August 2008
    Yeh, currently smoothwall is doing what I need. But you never know. With the way I am I'm sure I could find more for it to do. But I don't know if I can afford to put much more load on it though. Last night it was at 50% load. I'm not sure how many users were active cause I forgot to check, but I'm guessing that old pentium II is working pretty hard.

    The front screen is one thing I wish they'd rework though. It'd be so nice to see red IP (with current in/out) then the other network sections with current active users and speed.

    And on the network traffic AJAX graphs, they are really cool, but it takes them away if there is no traffic for 2 seconds I think. Then they just end up popping back up. I understand why they did that, but I think 30 seconds would be a more appropriate delay that would keep so many graphs from popping in and out.
  • GrayFoxGrayFox /dev/urandom Member
    edited August 2008
    I prefer ipcop as well. But only because of all the addons and documentation.

    I use to use smoothwall its new web interface is nicer.


    but a combination of a Debian server and a pfsense box is my current setup.
    (BIND9 + DHCP3 on debian)

    PFsense is great and it supports much more, Vlan's, equal cost load balancing, 802.1Q trunking for vlans.

    Its QOS in pfsense seems to be more powerful then ipcops as well. (No idea for smoothwall last time I used it was back in 04).

    edit: If your just running a simple 2 interface firewall you might just want to check out the intel BOXD945GCLF its a great board for a simple firewall its also very powerful.

    Just add in ram, a storage device,psu and another network card and you have yourself a firewall.
  • airbornflghtairbornflght Houston, TX Icrontian
    edited August 2008
    I was thinking of it, but if I get the money I'm asking for I'll be expanding to 3 interfaces keeping the wireless segregated.
  • GrayFoxGrayFox /dev/urandom Member
    edited August 2008
    Thats a good plan, you might want to consider setting up vlans and segmenting the network into different parts for security,reliability and management purposes.

    I think your switches you mentioned before support 802.1Q encapsulation so you only need one physical link from the router/firewall to the switch and you can pass multiple networks through it.
  • trolltroll Windsor, Nova Scotia Icrontian
    edited September 2008
    We use IPCop a lot at clients sites... Install URL Filter and they can add all the sites to the list they don't want their employees going to...

    It's a transparent proxy right at the IPCop box so nothing needs to change on the desktops at all... Sweet!
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