Ubuntu Linux Help

I was reading a story on Digg this morning, about an 11 year old child who was functioning as the network manager for some private school’s network. Within the comments was a post that referred to “Untangle” and why the school chose not to use it. The commenter suggested that the individual probably didn’t know how to configure the application suite, and that’s why it was not used. The Untangle web site however, says:

“…if you have a basic knowledge of networking, you can install, use and maintain Untangle. With just a few steps, you can transform a rack of servers into one single point of control. And it works from the minute you set it up, providing instant protection…”

I thought I’d take a closer look at Untangle. For those not familiar with it. Untangle is a suite of applications which facilitate a Network Gateway. Some of the features are spam blocking, web filtering, firewall, routing, reporting, etc. It’s under the OpenSource banner and is free to use and download.

The download is an iso image which you can burn to CD and install an a PC based system. However, there are a couple caveats we need to be aware of. The installation should be performed on a PC dedicated to this function, because the installation will erase all data off the existing hard drive. If you’re seriously interested in trying Untangle, you’ll need to be aware of the recommended hardware specifications:

CPU - 2.0GHz
DDR - 1-2GB
HDD - 40GB
NIC - 2 or 3 if you’ll require DMZ

For those of us installing in a home network environment, small business, school, etc. The best place to locate your new Network Gateway is either between your ISP broadband (or other connection) and router, or between your router and the network itself.

Upon causal observation, it appears that this may be a simple solution to install. I suspect it’s the configuration that would take some common sense decisions. I’m downloading the package as I type this post and will burn to CD later this weekend.

Next month (April… only a couple days away), in part 2 of this post. I’ll perform the actual install and configuration and report back any issues as well as exciting features. If anyone else has experience with this suite, we’d like to read what you have to say (just comment about it). If this is as smooth and powerful as the Untangle web site suggests, I can think of at least a dozen places this could be used!

Stay tuned for April’s “part 2″ of this post.
Have a great weekend everyone!