05-01-2008, 01:33 AM
I just wanted to throw this out there for anyone looking to help protect their home networks better - IPCop
IPCop is a very small Linux distro that allows you to set up a hardware firewall in no time at all. You can also run it inside of a virtual machine if that's more fitting for you. On my install at home I have the 'URL Filter' set up and it helps me manage what web pages the little ones computer can pull up (IP based). What we ended up with is a pre-defined list of pages that can be accessed. This feature ALONE is worth its weight in gold.
There's plenty of logging and stats options to keep you happy and it's very expandable using a variety of add-ons produced by the community.
IPCop is a very small Linux distro that allows you to set up a hardware firewall in no time at all. You can also run it inside of a virtual machine if that's more fitting for you. On my install at home I have the 'URL Filter' set up and it helps me manage what web pages the little ones computer can pull up (IP based). What we ended up with is a pre-defined list of pages that can be accessed. This feature ALONE is worth its weight in gold.
There's plenty of logging and stats options to keep you happy and it's very expandable using a variety of add-ons produced by the community.