[Info-vax] vtAlpha and marketing bullshit

[ChrisQ]

On 12/22/11 13:24, Paul Sture wrote:

>
> At the moment, having some fun learning about this stuff is the main
> point for me. I'd forgotten about pfsense but have had favourable reports
> from folks I know.

Have been using pfsense for about a year now and have just built up another
machine for the latest version, which also seems ok. Compared to ipcop, 
there
are a lot more setup options (parameters I had never heard of) and pages 
in the gui,
so you need to think a bit more about what you are doing to get the best 
results.
Nothing gets through other than the lan gui by default, so you need to 
set up a
few rules to talk to anything external. Compared to ipcop, the time 
scheduling is more
intuitive and snag free. One thing I did use on ipcop was the url filter 
addon,
which uses a free third party list to filter out various categories 
(violence,
porn, gambling etc), stuff unsuitable for the family. The kids have 
always had
their own machine, which I don't audit, but felt filtering appropriate 
when they
were younger. Haven't looked to see if it will run on pfsense, but later 
perhaps.
Initial setup is trivial, 10 minutes: Plug in as many network cards as 
needed, just about
any type of network card, boot the cd distro and follow the 
instructions. Change the
default lan ip etc to something on your lan, then log in from a browser 
to do the
post install and set some rules. The snort packet inspection addon works 
on both, btw
with free rule lists via snort.org.

>
> But my original comment wasn't restricted to firewalls.  I am also
> interested in backup and NAS solutions using various tools out there.  I
> have a feeling Santa is going to bring me extra kit to play in that area
> shortly :-)
>

Something to keep you busy over the holidays, once you've had enough 
turkey, trash
tv and excess :-).

Have a good one...

Regards,

Chris