Linux Router
 

I want a free Linux based firewall distro. that has a nice graphical interface that can be acessed by administrators (me), hopefully off a webpage that can be acessed localy and securly, so that i can see all network traffic on the companies internet connnection. woudl help if it supports IP tables. I know I have saw one similiar to what I want, but i can not figure out what it was. Hopefully it isn't to much to ask for, and I can find what I am looking for.

I do not know alot about linux, but lucky work with a few programmers and they have a good knowledge of linux.

I don't know of any canned firewall-oriented projects, but it sounds like an interesting idea. There used to be the Linux Router Project but it was retired earlier this year due to lack of interest.

You may find it easiest just to install a bare-bones distro and learn how to use it.

A friend of mine uses E-smith for his firewall.

Says it's easy to use and hassle free. I've never used it myself so I can't guarantee its merits.

I tried googling for it, but it's very elusive. I think this is the site: http://www.e-smith.org/

Pro: boot the machine from cd-rom, press a few keys and an hour later it's all set up.

Con: it will wipe out the harddrive in the process (so use on a new/spare machine)

p.s. this is all hear-say. But it sounds promising.

I've heard good things about OpenWall and Knoppix, though I haven't used them myself. You could try either of those. The nice thing about Knoppix is that you can run the OS off a CD, so you can boot it up on your computer before destroying any data already on the harddrive to see if you like it.

Yeah. If I recall, some people were working on making a knoppix distro that was built to be run as a server/router/firewall, the premise being that its pretty hard to root a box that you cant write to...

Knoppix is a good distro to try and see if Linux is your thing. Its a little slow since everything has to load off of a CD, but it doesnt do anything to the computer its installed on, so you can run it without having to worry about screwing up your windows install.

Hands down best (even though the interface isnt opensource) ive seen is astaro linux.

http://www.astaro.com

There is a free version for home use. The interface is completely webbased. Super slick. Only downside to astaro is its not opensource and the fully featured version costs lots of $$.

Heck, you might want to try installing some version of Red Hat (now Fedora) or Mandrake. They come with server setups that are very easy to use. I dont know about routing, but I use Red Hat to run my webserver, and its pretty damn easy.

I personally use Red Hat for my firewall, but theres no easy out of the box graphical interface for configuring it as a router. Plenty of premade scripts out there though that can do the job.

I used bbiagent.net for a while.

Try using a small distro and putting shorewall on it.. I use shorewall for most of my boxen and I love the util.

An easy way to go is to install your favorite distro, such as Debian or RedHat, then install Webmin. It has a firewall rules module built in.

http://leaf.sourceforge.net/

The LEAF Bering release uses a bare-bones linux distro, like meff mentioned, and uses shorewall. There are a few other interesting LEAF distros that may server your needs also.

Firewall builder

This sw kicks ass! Generates policy scripts for iptables, ipfw, pf, Cisco PIX. Runs on Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Max OS X.

Very nice GUI, good manual. Worth a look...