Smoothwall Or Pfsense?

[DaBeach]

I currently run a Netgear FVS338 and need the following features:

Block all MAC ID's except those on white-list

Block URL

Bandwidth shaping for certain IP's

Block services on some IP's and not others

And I have seen in Smoothwall the ability to monitor the network live including a log of URL's and pages visited and IM sniffing.

I am sure this question has been asked MANY times before but I will do it again.

Under these circumstances what would you guys choose to perform these features Smoothwall or pfSense? I have been working on several systems and it seems it always comes back to these two distros.

Also taking into consideration the ability to tweak later and/or add more powerful features or monitoring, preferably in a WWW GUI vs. command line if possible.

Thanks for the opinions!

Edited June 24, 2010 by DaBeach

[deleted]

Well, my personal preference is pfSense, but both Smoothwall and pfSense can do what you have mentioned.

I just feel pfSense has much more to offer than Smoothwall because it has a much fuller feature set. Smoothwall seems rather restricted in terms of features, probably to get you to use their professional versions.

For basic Firewall usage, it really just comes down to personal preference of which one you like using.

Both offer customisability through their Web Interfaces and both also offer direct Command Line access for when its needed.

[DaBeach]

Well, my personal preference is pfSense, but both Smoothwall and pfSense can do what you have mentioned.

I just feel pfSense has much more to offer than Smoothwall because it has a much fuller feature set. Smoothwall seems rather restricted in terms of features, probably to get you to use their professional versions.

For basic Firewall usage, it really just comes down to personal preference of which one you like using.

Both offer customisability through their Web Interfaces and both also offer direct Command Line access for when its needed.

Well, I had a limited experiance with Smoothwall and even though it worked fine I setup a pfSense snapshot and I was impressed by the configurability out of the box. I think I will go pfSense on my new router machine project.

[Infiltrator]

Any user would have a different opinion towards which open source firewall product to use. However I think you should try out both to determine which one is best for you.

I have just installed Smootwall and I am very happy with, however I will give PFsense a try just to get a good feel and sense for both.

Edited June 26, 2010 by Infiltrator

[DaBeach]

Any user would have a different opinion towards which open source firewall product to use. However I think you should try out both to determine which one is best for you.

I have just installed Smootwall and I am very happy with, however I will give PFsense a try just to get a good feel and sense for both.

I would recommend doing a test install of pfSense using the snapshots, I am using this now and it seems stable. I have played with the package system which is a nice way to install mods in an automated fashion via the WWW GUI however, some of the mods I would like to install namely Squid and the Squid URL blocker have failed. I think the interface is allot more tunable out of the box.

My basic issue now is I am unsure how to FTP into the box, the SSH via Putty is not or does not seem like I can run command lines however, command lines can be sent via the WWW GUI. I would like to be able to block url's only to specific users/IP's or MAC ID's and be able to monitor IM's as well.

Nevertheless I am impressed with the interface. The automated mod installation system is similar to say Drupal mods vs. having to hard code everything manually.

Here is a link to pfSense snapshots

http://snapshots.pfsense.org/