The Hunt For the Ultimate Free Open Source Firewall Distro

1

Untangle

#Operating Systems #Perimeter Security And Firewalls #Linux 4 social mentions

2

pfSense

I am a hobby sys-admin who uses NS on a standalone firewall/web filter at a 20-ppl company company, and at home in a container. I went through almost all of the options you mention in this article and none of the other Firewalls matched NS in function (support for multi-WAN in particular is much better),, except for PFSense, which I've been using initially but replaced after testing NS as I prefer linux-based solution for company, and containerable solution for home. Some of the other firewall distros mentioned here are no longer developed and/or not supporting some key features of decent firewall/internet entry point, like MultiWan. In my opinion you have poor reasons not to include it in your comparison, but it's your blog so go ahead and ignore my input. If you did, it would have saved me quite a bit of time when I was looking for a firewall myself.

#Perimeter Security And Firewalls #Cyber Security #Network Security 10 social mentions

3

IPFire

#Operating Systems #Linux #Perimeter Security And Firewalls 2 social mentions

4

VyOS

Thank you for the post! I would like to add a point if possible. As far as i know VyOS has dmvpn functionality available, which is a thing to consider for large-scale and rapidly growing companies. Other software routers do not have such thing as far as know.

#Operating Systems #Linux #Network & Admin 30 social mentions

5

SmoothWall

#Firewall #Monitoring Tools #Perimeter Security And Firewalls

6

Endian Firewall Community

#Operating Systems #Linux #Perimeter Security And Firewalls

7

ClearOS

#Operating Systems #Perimeter Security And Firewalls #Linux

8

Zentyal

#Cloud Computing #Cloud Storage #Identity And Access Management

10

Sophos UTM

#Monitoring Tools #Firewall #Network Monitoring

11

ZeroShell

Any chance for an overview/update of the top contenders? Your last update was 2015 and we are closing fast on 2020. I'd like to see a revisit of top contenders only - ideally free but feel free to include a commercial version or two if it is really that much better. In particular I'd appreciate more drill down on pfsense vs zeroshell. I've begun playing with zeroshell but just heard about pfsense, so I could still switch directions if there is incentive. Zeroshell has a lot of addons but it seems a little difficult to get ones hands on them, so I am worried about support with this one.

#Monitoring Tools #Firewall #Network Monitoring

12

OPNsense

#Operating Systems #Linux #Perimeter Security And Firewalls 94 social mentions