Linux Firewall – SmoothWall.org

smoothwall_bear_logoI must say I am impressed by the SmoothWall firewall. It has a fantastic interface and it was an easy install. A little reading ahead of time and an understanding of firewall zones helped get my firewall knowledge converted to Smoothie talk.

smoothwall_logoI started with a PIII-400c Compaq, 256 MB RAM and a 1.5 GB HD (I will replace that with a CF card when the IDE-CF adapter comes in), 1.44 Floppy, a CDROM and 3 NIC’s. After a video card swap (AGP1 not AGP 2) and a few CDROM swaps, I found one that worked…why do I keep the broken ones…and the install went with out a hitch.

Since I have web/email servers, wifi and hardwired clients, I choose the GREEN + ORANGE + RED configuration. This was probably the hardest choice of the install.

GREEN: for my wifi and hardwired clients

ORANGE: for my servers

RED: to the Cable Modem.

The card recognition went flawlessly since I luckly had a stack of 3COM 3C905 cards, and I choose a 3C905A, 3C905B, and 3C905C for ease of identification. Future Tip: Write the MAC addresses on the case so ya don’t have to open the box up again to verify. I set the A to the IP of my internal network, the B to my server network and the RED to the Cable Modem External IP. A set the passwords and quick reboot and that is it for managing at the box.

Nothing fancy I thought, until I logged into the SmoothWall interface. WOW, the system is actually 100% controlled from here! Monitoring traffic via the AJAX refreshed views was awesome.

I backed up my configuration to a floppy and tested rebooting. Everything came back up fine.

Now I need to figure out how to host multiple Cable Modem IP’s and I have decided to throw in one more NIC for the GREEN + PURPLE + ORANGE + RED config, so I will tweak this again, by running setup at the command line and altering the “Network configuration type”.

GREEN: for my hardwired clients

PURPLE: for my wifi clients

ORANGE: for my servers

RED: to the Cable Modem.

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