This can be very satisfying for like-minded people as myself who always like to look under the hood.ģ. You’ll also get to understand thoroughly how firewalls work in practice and when things go awry, then troubleshooting is the best way to learn. It’s a great learning experience and you might benefit it in your job or studies. It brings great satisfaction to see something rather complicated to fully function and doing its thing as it’s supposed to.Ģ. I like to build, configure, tinker and harden various Network Hardware and Operating Systems. Some people enjoy fishing, sports, reading, knitting or whatsoever. Nevertheless, I've listed below various reasons for someone still hesitating:ġ.
If you’re wondering such question, then I’m surprised you even reached reading this far! For an enthusiastic professional and hobbyist such as myself, building your own firewall can be quite enjoyable, pretty straightforward and not that hard target to achieve anyhow. Why should you build your own hardware firewall in the first place? These conditions are usually included within commercial products and services, but not so much in FOSS products. When considering acquiring a firewall for anything larger than micro business, then one should always acknowledge other important value added business elements, such as warranty, maintenance and support. All views expressed in this article are my own and do not represent the opinions of any entity whatsoever with which I have been, am now, or will be affiliated. Virtualizing firewall is of course great option as well, but not part of this specific report.ĭISCLAIMER: This article is by no means an academic study, research or thesis and is meant primarily to help avid hobbyists, students and home users to explore world of self-build firewalls. Also notice, that this review takes a stand regarding building the firewall on top of bare metal hardware (HW) and not virtualizing it. Albeit notice, that I’m taking a stand regarding building the actual device only, but not so much configuring it. With this fairly lightweight and intermediate level article I would like to share my own personal experience and provide hints & tips in hope it would help someone else passionate enough and thinking about taking the same journey as I did to the world of self-build firewalls.
Cisco IOS and Extreme Networks Exos) and I know, but haven’t really used a lot of other various Unix-like router and FW software packages/distros (e.g. I’m also a bit familiar with few commercial network appliance OS’ (e.g.
DD-WRT, OpenWRT, Gargoyle Router, Tomato Firmware etc.
My experience from Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) firewall/router Operating Systems comes from Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS) router world including e.g. During the past 20 years I’ve built, configured and hardened my various home networks to include dozens of workstations, servers, mobile devices, switches and routers since pre-teen and from now on and since summer of 2018, dedicated self-build firewall (FW) appliances as well. I’m a passionate Cyber Security and Network enthusiast, long time computer nerd and IT Business Professional. I finally had time enough to build, deploy and configure my own dedicated Enterprise-Level bare metal hardware firewall from the scratch. During the long and exceptionally hot summer of 2018 in Finland I was able to accomplish an ICT project which I had longed for quite a while now.