Book Image

Configuring IPCop Firewalls: Closing Borders with Open Source

Book Image

Configuring IPCop Firewalls: Closing Borders with Open Source

Overview of this book

IPCop is a powerful, open source, Linux based firewall distribution for primarily Small Office Or Home (SOHO) networks, although it can be used in larger networks. It provides most of the features that you would expect a modern firewall to have, and what is most important is that it sets this all up for you in a highly automated and simplified way. This book is an easy introduction to this popular application. After introducing and explaining the foundations of firewalling and networking and why they're important, the book moves on to cover using IPCop, from installing it, through configuring it, to more advanced features, such as configuring IPCop to work as an IDS, VPN and using it for bandwidth management. While providing necessary theoretical background, the book takes a practical approach, presenting sample configurations for home users, small businesses, and large businesses. The book contains plenty of illustrative examples.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Configuring IPCop Firewalls
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
Preface
7
Virtual Private Networks
11
IPCop Support

The Bandwidth Problem


In most networks in use at the moment there will generally be a number of different services provided and used by the network and there may be multiple links to other networks. With so many services in place we can use up bandwidth very quickly. The easiest way to ensure you have enough bandwidth for all the services and users on your network is to buy fast links with low contention. This is a good theory, but the economic reality is a little bit more complex, as bandwidth can be expensive and can be a major overhead to a service. In order to combat this, we can work with the services we have and try to reduce their bandwidth usage.

Reducing bandwidth usage can initially be accomplished by using protocols that conserve bandwidth where possible; sometimes, however, we have no choice and have to go with a particular protocol dictated by an application, a vendor, or a user. This is when we can look at reducing the strain put on the network by that application. There are...