IPFire is a free and open source firewall based Linux distribution. It acts as a router and firewall. You need to use a web interface to manage your firewall settings.
One can setup the following options out of the box when using IPFire:
- Proxy server with content filter and caching functionality for updates (i.e. Microsoft Windows updates and anti-virus).
- Intrusion detection system (Snort) with intrusion prevention guardian
- VPN server and client via IPsec and OpenVPN
- DHCP server for LAN
- Caching name server (DNS)
- Time server for time keeping
- Wake-on-LAN (WOL)
- Dynamic DNS
- Quality of Service
- Outgoing firewall
- System monitoring and log analysis
You can extend IPFire to include additional services for your network such as:
- Samba file server
- CUPS print server
- vsftpd ftp server
- Asterisk
- TeamSpeak
- Video Disk Recorder (VDR)
- Mail server system includes Postfix, SpamAssassin, ClamAV, Amavis
- WIFI Access-Point (HostAPD)
- Streaming server
- Routing the traffic to the Tor network or running a relay (TOR)
- Monitoring services like Nagio/NRPE
From the blog post:
How well is IPFire suited as a home network router, firewall, and Wi-Fi access point in it’s default configuration? IPFire is easy to install, but some assembly will be required before it can fulfill the needs of a standard home network setup.
Advanced network features like Quality-of-Service (QoS) and transparent web acceleration/proxying is easy to setup from IPFire’s web interface. However, basic needs of a home network such as passing traffic from the Wi-Fi to wired network or allowing programs to burrow out of the firewall with UPnP is much more complicated to configure.
- Read more: Review: IPFire as a home router