[ILUG] Re: IP Tables Astaro -VS- Smoothwall ?

[Petra]

John Gay wrote:
> 
> I just had a quick look at the Astaro page following Petra's mention of it
> recently.
> 
> As I use SmoothWall on an old 486 in the loft, I was interested. I am still
> running the original version that came with the Linux Format magazine. Teh
> only problems I've had so far has been occational crashes, that seem to be
> hardware related anyway.
> 
> After having a look, I see no reason to change. For my small personal
> network, Smoothwall does what I need. Astaro seems to be aimed at the large
> corporate intranet. The thing I like about Smoothwall is it makes use of old
> hardware that would otherwise need to be scrapped. Astaro seems to need a
> 400Mhz Pentium class system to run. My SmoothWall system is a 100Mhz Pentium
> Overdrive with 8M of memory. It seems that I could not run Astaro on this if
> I wanted to.
> 
> These are just my quick observations based on my system and needs. I'm sure
> that Astaro has a great product and it seems that for large corporations it
> might just be what is needed, but for small home systems, SmoothWall suits me
> fine.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
>         John Gay
>
I couldn't have put it better myself...

I started to use Astro after coming across this problem.

   --          --------           -----------        ---------
  |PC1|-------|Intranet|---------| Astro Box |------| Server1 |
   --          --------           -----------        ---------
                                                 (private IP Address)

PC1 needs to contact Server1, but Server1 has a private IP address which
cannot be changed.  I setup the Astro Box to do DNAT and SNAT to packets
coming from PC1 with the Astro box as destination. (Public IP address of
Astro)
So all packets hitting the Astro box get forwarded to Server1 and look
like they
came from the Astro box private IP address.

So far so good, but then I find that the Web interface to Server1
is sending Java Applets to PC1.  When they run, they target the Private
IP address
of Server1, which PC1 does not know how to get to.

My first solution is to use two Astro boxes, one at the PC1 side to take
packets
for the Private network and DNAT and SNAT them, sending them to the
second Astro box
as if they came from the Public IP address of the first Astro box.

I guess that I could use VPN, but I need this working in a hurry.

Does anyone out there have any ideas....?

Pete.