The application will install on any PC to convert it to a dedicated cut-price firewall appliance. SmoothWall can be run as a DHCP server or as a proxy server alongside Snort, the open source intrusion-detection system.
The Leeds, UK-based company offers its commercial firewall product in two versions, both of them software-only: the more basic Corporate Firewall for up to 250 users, and the more comprehensive Advanced Firewall for larger numbers. The Advanced Firewall, which includes default features such as VPN that are sold as separate modules for Corporate, can also be deployed in two modes: gateway and internal.
Express 3 is based on the latest Linux 2.6 kernel and is said to feature a new open architecture that is designed to make it easy for software developers to produce their own security components for SmoothWall. The supplier claims over a million registered installations of SmoothWall Express 2.
