SmoothWall


Recommended Posts

We use it as the firewall in many schools and businesses and even in our own office. It's an excellent firewall and won't give you any problems. I haven't heard of anyone using it at home yet, although I have thought of doing it myself. The only reason I haven't is that I don't want to give up a PC to do it.

Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/258863-smoothwall/#findComment-585121567
Share on other sites

We use it as the firewall in many schools and businesses and even in our own office. It's an excellent firewall and won't give you any problems.  I haven't heard of anyone using it at home yet, although I have thought of doing it myself. The only reason I haven't is that I don't want to give up a PC to do it.

585121567[/snapback]

I've stuck to shorewall for quite awhile, but that does look quite promising and very user friendly.

Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/258863-smoothwall/#findComment-585125445
Share on other sites

Consider IPcop. (Y)

It's a stand alone distro that provides firewalling, web proxy (some limitations to it, though, from my experience) and a vpn endpoint. It's pretty simple to use, and it's web interface is _much_ better than those offered by several commercial routers.

Their support system is top-notch. While more of a mailing-list type of guy myself, their boards contain a wealth of info from experienced gurus. Don't ignore the documentation, though; the author(s) put a lot of effort into 'em for your perusal.

Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/258863-smoothwall/#findComment-585135453
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

Smoothwall is good. I would highly recommend it. (but to be fair, I haven't tried the competition out). Really good to have a standalone firewall outside of the soft-firewall on your computer. It is even better to have 2 firewalls that are on 2 completely different operating systems.

Besides firewall, Smoothwall is also good at: DHCP Serving (with a static MAC address table) and VPN Serving. I think you can also configure it to accept dial-up connections, but I haven't played around with it. It has a really slick web interface, and you can even get to a shell with a java applet it comes with on the page. Really easy to setup.

Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/258863-smoothwall/#findComment-585288649
Share on other sites

I used Smoothwall a couple years ago and it was great. I switched to Astaro because it has caching. (DNS and HTTP) Astaro also has a VPN server and can be setup as an endpoint.

Astaro free for home use is restricted to 10 hosts though. The pay version brings web and mail virus filtering.

Astaro has steeper sys req than Smoothwall but I'v been using it on an old dual proc P3 Dell workstation for some time and its rock solid.

This IPcop looks pretty good. I can't find a list on their site of what services it uses. It appears to do webcaching with SQUID but what about a DNS cache? Anything else?

Traffic shaping looks cool.

**mOnOwall looks way more impressive than it used to, also. I may have to switch over to it. :)

Edited by randy_tho
Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/258863-smoothwall/#findComment-585305034
Share on other sites

Smoothwall Express 2 tested on Tomshardware:

http://www.tomsnetworking.com/Reviews-178-...-SMOOTHWALL.php

It's great and easy to setup.

If you don't need many features it's great.

If you do want the extra's try IPCOP : http://www.ipcop.org/

585121561[/snapback]

wow thanks for the link is very useful for me thanks a lot :yes: (Y) (Y)

Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/258863-smoothwall/#findComment-585320606
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • These features described above are good, but far from what developers like me was eager to get. And that main feature that developers will love it`s the ability to connect to LOCAL AI models running on Ollama. So if you have a beefy spec machine you can now use your own model 100% local inside Visual Studio 2026 18.7.0
    • Microsoft Teams is getting a controversial location tracking feature that users may hate by Usama Jawad Image generated with Microsoft Copilot Earlier this year, Microsoft planned to roll out a controversial location tracking feature in Teams, but following customer feedback, it decided to delay its release. The bad news is that the company has decided to launch it later this year, but it's based on roughly the same design that was shared earlier, which means that many users still have good reason to worry. Basically, Microsoft Places and Teams have received workplace check-ins via Wi-Fi. The idea is that if an employee arrives at the office and connects to their enterprise network, their profile status indicator will show them as being present in the office. For example, if you arrive at work, open Teams on your PC, and connect to the "Studio B" company Wi-Fi network, your Teams profile will indicate that you are present in "Studio B", as shown below: Microsoft says that this feature is basically a replacement for physical workplace check-in peripherals, it reduces the need to manually update your status, and it also enables co-workers to know that you're at work so that they can coordinate in-person meetings with you. IT admins can enable this workplace check-in capability at a tenant level, and users have the ability to control whether they want to enable it or not. Of course, all of that sounds great on paper, but naturally, many Teams customers may still have concerns, as they did before. This is because it enables your reporting manager and other members of the organization to track if you are at the office, when you arrive at the office, and where you are right now. This could be problematic for people who work in what they consider to be flexible work environments or hybrid setups, and this kind of location tracking could be considered an invasion of privacy. Microsoft has tried to alleviate some of these concerns by letting users know that they can manually set their location easily, which essentially overrides workplace check-in if they feel uncomfortable with it. However, that doesn't really solve the problem because your organization could enforce a workplace policy that mandates that this feature remains enabled. The Redmond tech giant has also assured users that this capability does not store historical data and is only a real-time indicator of location. Finally, it only generates a signal when you connect to a corporate network, which means that if you are working from home and connect your PC to your personal Wi-Fi, it won't broadcast your location to your employer; you will simply be shown as "Remote". Microsoft has encouraged IT admins to prepare for this change and begin informing users so they know what to expect once it begins rolling out later this year.
    • Wow, Microsoft IS cooking lately... This only shows that they COULD improve, they just chose not to for whatever reasons. That obsession with AI was destroying them from the inside out.
  • Recent Achievements

    • Very Popular
      AndrewSteel earned a badge
      Very Popular
    • Veteran
      Taliseian went up a rank
      Veteran
    • One Month Later
      Clizby earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • One Month Later
      Timaximus earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      Timaximus earned a badge
      Week One Done
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      511
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      162
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      157
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      83
    5. 5
      ATLien_0
      80
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!