[mdlug] Replacing D-Link router with Smoothwall box

[Michael ORourke]

I found one caveat with Smoothwall.  The kernel is built *without* pcmcia 
support.  Which I didn't know until I tried to load it onto an older laptop 
for testing.  It's a Dell lattitude C600 with two differenct ethernet pcmcia 
cards in it.  I thought it would be a great way to familiarize myself with 
the Smoothwall Express 3.0 software before deploying it on a small office 
network.  I had no problem loading the software on the laptop, but could not 
configure the ethernet ports.  Because it couldn't even detect them.  After 
doing a quick search on their support forums, I soon realized that pcmcia 
support was NOT baked into their package and I would have to build a custom 
kernel for the pcmcia support.  Sounds like too much hassle at the moment 
just to test some software out.  So maybe I'll look into IPCop and see how 
it differs.
Thanks for the feedback.

-Mike

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ron Blanchett" <muteid10t at gmail.com>
To: "MDLUG's Main discussion list" <mdlug at mdlug.org>
Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2008 9:55 PM
Subject: Re: [mdlug] Replacing D-Link router with Smoothwall box


>I used smoothwall for a number of years and found it lacking in several 
>areas.
> I have since switch to pfSense and have not thought about looking back.
>
> I would suggest looking for a firewall that is not the free version of
> a pay product, Smoothwall and Astaro are two such that I can think of.
>
>
> Go with IPCop, monowall, pfsense or some other such actually free 
> firewall.
>
> -Ron
>
> Note: monowall & pfsense are based off of freebsd, pf uses the
> firewall (pf) from openbsd.
>
> On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 3:39 PM, Michael ORourke <mrorourke at earthlink.net> 
> wrote:
>> Lug Nuts,
>>
>> I have a small network with a Linux (OpenSuSE 11) server installed.  I am
>> considering replacing the D-Link router with a Smoothwall box (Linux
>> router/firewall).  But after reading up on the Smoothwall docs, I'm not 
>> sure
>> of the best way to proceed.  The Linux server is running Samba, Apache, 
>> and
>> soon to be running a mail server.  According to the Smoothwall docs, it
>> looks like you would normally put the server in the DMZ (orange network)
>> because it provides external facing services (i.e. web).  But that will
>> cause problems with the Samba services as it will be on a different 
>> subnet
>> than the green network (internal clients) and it will require extra ports 
>> be
>> opened between the green and orange networks.  Some Google searches have
>> suggested that you NOT put Samba on the orange network.
>> Here are a couple of possible solutions.  For one, I'm not going to build 
>> a
>> second server with just Apache and Postfix on the orange network (DMZ), 
>> that
>> just seems like a waste of resources.  But I could go with a red-green
>> configuration and port forward web & email traffic to the green network
>> (internal), just like the D-Link does now.  Or maybe setup a second nic
>> (eth1) in the server on the green network (internal) and bind samba to 
>> that
>> interface and still have eth0 on the orange network (DMZ) protected by 
>> the
>> smoothwall box.  Any other suggestions out there?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Mike
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> mdlug at mdlug.org
>> http://mdlug.org/mailman/listinfo/mdlug
>>
>
>
>
> -- 
>
> Groucho Marx  - "I have a mind to join a club and beat you over the
> head with it."
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