Astaro Security Gateway Free Home Edition?

[Burke]

Leo Laporte advertises Astaro on his Security Now podcast, so I swung by their website to try it out.

The free suite is almost 500 MEGABYTES. Have any of you used this product and can give me your impressions?

http://www.astaro.com/our_products/p...e_home_edition

[YARDofSTUF]

Seems to have a lot of features, havent used it, but I've made a couple firewall boxes from endian.

I can't find an Endian/Untangle/Astaro comparison though.

[YeOldeStonecat]

Yes it's a pretty good UTM distro. Quite well known in the business networking world, where it's had a good foothold for their professional (pay for) packages.

UTM = Unified Threat Management..it's more than just a NAT router/firewall, scanning traffic for viruses, e-mail for spam/virus, content filtering, etc. IMO these are to be desired for any business networks, gone are the days of plain NAT routers.

Astaro has been around for quite a while, they've had a "free" version available for a while for non commercial use....it was just not advertised as much. With the rising popularity of Untangle and Endian...I guess they're wanting to get their name out there more with this push for the free home edition.

When building your own router distros...for best stability/performance, use hardware that is good solid business grade hardware. Small form factor business desktops with standard Intel chipsets, onboard Intel or Broadcom NICs, and hard drive controllers. For lighter home use, people are using little Shuttles....or at home I use (although not with Astaro) a slightly older IBM Thinkpad laptop. Small footprint, low noise, low heat, low energy consumption, built in monitor and keyboard, and a built in battery backup. PCMCIA NIC used as the 2nd NIC. Also smart to do, check with the distros forums ahead of time, in there or on a Wiki they'll usually have an HCL (Hardware Compatibility List) showing brands/models/etc of devices that it's been shown to work well on.

Are you looking to upgrade your home network, or at the office?

Installation of *nix router distros is actually quite easy, you don't have to have network administrator skills or knowledge of linux. If you can setup your own home grade routers, it's not much more difficult to setup a *nix router. Get a little PC with 2x NICs, download 'n burn the ISO which makes a bootable CD. Have a basic understanding of your internet connection in your head (Cable, or static, or PPPoE DSL so have your user/pass handy). Boot from that CD...follow the easy install guide wizard...and follow the bouncing ball. Administration is much like your typical home grade router...via a web browser.