Smoothwall 3.0

[shbris]

tried google and searched threads, no joy

so smoothwall. i've got a spare machine that could run it. questions aaare:

1. rumours about it speeding up browsing etc., founded? thought the extra step in connection might reduce ping and speeds

2. Will it actually help cache webpages anymore than OS already does? (use google chrome for reference)

3. gaming. again, how does it effect ping?

4. Security. how big are the advantages? any disadvantages

5. Torrents. will they route through properly? Can it strip out bad IP's in the same way that PeerGuardian does? (also relevant for general security these days)

6. Combatibility. with a wireless/wired router (4 wire ports and wireless) will it be able to do it all through that properly?

ie. Internetzzz ---> Smoothwall ---> Router ----> Wired Computers
......................................................... + ----> wireless computers

7. any other issues to look out for?


sorry for all the questions, the actual forums aren't much help

[Moby-Dick]

its been a long time since I built a smoothwall.

in the diagram above your router is just being used as a switch / access point. is this what you want ?

[Moby-Dick]

in terms of the web caching - if you had a single person browsing you wouldn't really notice any acceleration , but if you had multiple people hitting the same page for the first time ( each ) then after its cached the cachable content on the page it'll load faster for the other clients.

I have a job on my freenas which downloads an ip blocklist every 24 hours, then updates the local firewall rules to drop packets from those IP's. I'd imagine that would be possible with smoothwall.

thats said , I've just had a look at the feature list...

http://download.smoothwall.net/pdf/F...Comparison.pdf

I'm not sure the free version of smoothwall while quite do it that way. ( although the premium versions have really come a long way since I last played with one ! )

[shbris]

yeh, currently is goes internet box (Virgin) into the Router then out to computers

Internet ---> Router ----> Computers

just wondering whether it was as simple as placing the computer with smoothwall between the broadband modem and the router, AND whether it worked properly with wireless (because on all the confusing smoothwall diagrams they seem to mostly have seperate routers for wireless and wired, orange for wireless and green for wired :S )

[Moby-Dick]

you might have a problem because the virgin modems used to be based on MAC address authentication and the free product doesn't support MAC spoofing on the external ( RED ) interface.

[shbris]

aah ok, don't really wanna buy the commercial one

this question was purely "what if", just trying to understand more about it!! cheers for thoughts

[Moby-Dick]

there are other options though - have a look at m0n0wall or pfsense.

[Singh400]

For anyone else who doesn't know what Smootwall is.

Sounds like a brilliant little thing.

[madman045]

Another to look at if you have a PC with 2 network cards

http://www.untangle.com/

[ma10]

tried google and searched threads, no joy

so smoothwall. i've got a spare machine that could run it. questions aaare:

1. rumours about it speeding up browsing etc., founded? thought the extra step in connection might reduce ping and speeds

2. Will it actually help cache webpages anymore than OS already does? (use google chrome for reference)

3. gaming. again, how does it effect ping?

Smoothwall has basic QOS which you can tweak yourself which should help speed up higher priority stuff like web browsing and/or gaming... caching of webpages you could enable the proxy stuff in smoothwall which should cache frequently used websites especially if they are multiple PCs in your lan

4. Security. how big are the advantages? any disadvantages

Plenty of add-ins that will help with security like IPblock, Dansguardian which uses SNORT and ClamAV to scan traffic before it hits your LAN computers, pop-up blocker etc

5. Torrents. will they route through properly? Can it strip out bad IP's in the same way that PeerGuardian does? (also relevant for general security these days)

Torrents will work fine once you configure port forwarding properly... as for stripping out bad IPs, depends if you mean IPs that actively try to hack you or ones that you just don't want to know you're around... if it's the latter, then it's more DIY to get it working in smoothwall tbh.

6. Combatibility. with a wireless/wired router (4 wire ports and wireless) will it be able to do it all through that properly?

ie. Internetzzz ---> Smoothwall ---> Router ----> Wired Computers
......................................................... + ----> wireless computers

yep... works a treat for me....! Smoothwall has a DHCP server... so best to use the router as a simple switch/wireless AP in your proposed setup.

7. any other issues to look out for?

not really... been running a smoothie for about half a year 24/7 and it's been great so far.