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 Purpose of IPCop


IPCop is a firewall for the Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) network, which is extremely easy to use. It provides most of the basic 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. It's very easy to get an IPCop system up and running and takes hardly any time.

For features such as those in IPCop, we would usually have to pay for a high-end firewall system or string something together with a collection of other tools. IPCop takes some of these powerful tools and creates a pre-built package for us.

IPCop was created to fill what appears to be a void in the market, where users with small networks need some features that generally only large networks can afford, as far as the requirement for expertise or money is concerned. This book hopes to provide the additional expertise to make an adequate replacement for a commercial product really shine, as well as give...