[ILUG] Linux Firewalls proxy + port scanning....

[Wynne, Conor]

As per - someone on this lists suggestion - use smoothwall
www.smoothwall.org
- I set it up - replacing my suse 7 box (suse is too heavy and all I wanted
was a firewall and masq box anyway) 

It took - 15 minutes from booting onto the cd!!!! I could not believe it. 

Anyway, its basically a proxying dns / dhcp / ipchains and masq box, all the
ports are closed (I did a scan) which is nice! 
I also set up a proxy in another box using squid, and the owl nolimits is
looking better and better all the time. A proxy is yer man, I had my doubts
as to how much of a speed increase it would give, but it is (in my case 10
times the speed) I also took ram away from my win2k box -HA HA HA it felt
good! and donated it to squid. 

These are - as per usual - aproximate values which the author can not take
too seriuosly. 
My home page is now www.atomfilms.com - I wen't back to watch a flic a week
later (one already in cache) and iut comes up immediately. Squid rocks...

An interesting note on portscanning. Since the scan I ran, I have had 35
attempts a breaking into my lan. It seems to me that portscanning can be a
dangerous thing as it advertises to the internet that you are there... Of
the 35 attempts, none got through - I think! How can I be 100% sure?

Regards
CW

------------------------
I m looking at setting up a Linux firewall at home, and need to find a free
solution that is relatively manageable, and can still do NATing and
filtering.
The last time I tried this was with ipfwadm, and friendly was not a word I
would have associated with it.
It'll be a box with about three Network interfaces, two safe, one not.
Any ideas?