PFSense VS Endian VS IPCop -- some thoughts

Tags: security, software, linux, hardware, firewall, networking

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The firewall distributions i have tested

I have installed , and configured the following
M0n0wall
Endian
Ipcop
Smoothwall
Untangle
Pfsense
Astaro

Overall i have stuck with Astaro over the past few months , It is a VERY polished product, granted i have it installed on a 3Ghz 3GB Ram system, the features it includes are great, Very granular control of IPS, NAT rules, packet filter rules, nice easy to setup Open Vpn, content filter, spam filter for my home mail server the reporting features are the best in class that I have ever seen . The negatives and this is the only one i have found. The home license only grants 10 Ips that's it. If you want to upgrade the next option is the 25 user license at 695 dollars. Needless to say this box has been a great project to work on.

I also really like Pfsense, it can run on much lesser powered hardware than Astaro , but due to the fact that Astaro is a full featured UTM product.
The pros are the web interface is very nice, the throughput is awesome, i have this installed on a Msi axis pc 1Ghz cpu, and 1GB ram small form factor machine with onboard nic, and a Intel dual port server nic for the lan and opt interface.s The cons are that unlike AStaro and even Untangle create the Open Vpn config and the executable. In Pfsense you are forced to configure Open Vpn the old fashioned way, nothing hard to do though. I wish it had some of the UTM features that Astaro had but then again i wouldn't be able to run this on my current hardware. I have easily created the equivalent of a 1000 dollar firewall for much less. Why would anyone ever buy a firewall again..ha ha that's just my take.
I really enjoy building my own network protection devices.

I like the others such as smoothwall, and endian etc but have had issues with buggy web interfaces and dropped connections.
My Astaro setup has been running for 120 days straight and Pfsense close to 1 year

Posted: 02/06/2009 @ 05:33 ?? (PST)