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

Summary


As a user of IPCop, you are allowed to use the software in any way you wish and can even redistribute it, even modified, if needed. The software can be taken in another direction much like IPCop's own creation where it was forked from Smoothwall. This ensures that the software stays around and is useful for years to come, as you can be confident that there will be enough users turned into developers to keep the project going.

You can take the knowledge gained in this book and use it to create the network device that fits your specifications and modify and tune it as necessary. There are options and choices and the software has the protection of the GPL to allow it to survive any issues it has. This means that you can be quite confident in the choice of software as your network doesn't rely on a corporation staying afloat but rather on thousands of users and developers around the world, showing that they can and will work together in order to create truly remarkable software.