Hello Everyone,
I realize it’s been a little while since we last posted, but I’ve recently been receiving a lot of spam on this page. I’ve increased the protection by putting some methods in place that will keep robots from posting comments. Please realize that your comments will not be immediately approved if you have never posted before. Thank you for visiting, I hope to have some new articles up soon.
This is a quick update on using Untangle as a Gateway/Router and/or NAT. Ours is working fantastic, even though we have very few windows instances in our office (only one windows virtual instance for RDP connections) it isn’t uncommon for guests to bring windows laptops into our offices. Those windows boxes may or may not have proper security implementations and are thus susceptible to viruses, malicious software, and phishing schemes. Untangle effectively protects those computers by standing as a door guard between what can be retrieved from the internet. It also has a complete proxy suite which allows for content control so administrators can decide what catagories or individual websites are appropriate for office viewing. The only drawback is that it requires a moderate computer for an small to medium business deployment (SMB), it realistically needs a single core processor between 1-2Ghz and memory between 1-2GB depending on the size of the office; it’s well worth the sacrifice.
The same effect can be had on less powerful computers by building solutions from a headless linux distribution; however, it takes considerable expertise to build and implement, and is not as friendly to manage. If you’re interested in protecting your network, please contact us for information about your own networks.
We have been expirimenting with some open source routing software this week. I have to say that I’m incredibly impressed with Untangle as a network solution, so much so that it went into operation on an old P4 desktop we had lying around. It’s now serving as a VPN and web filter and doing quite well at it. I’d thoroughly recommend the open source edition for any organization who’s fed up with spam, malware, time sink hole websites, and viruses. It works best with a computer in the 1Ghz to 2ghz range with 1 to 2 Gigs of ram and 2 ethernet ports; however, it gets by quite well even on 500+ Mhz with 512 megs of ram with 2 ethernet cards. It will also work within a virtual machine if setup properly. We are happy to assist in the setup or consultation of routing and gateway solutions, use the contact page to the right for questions or to setup an appointment.