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Getting FreeBSD And Novell To Work Together?

Posted by Cliff on from the yes-but-can-they-play-together? dept.

Tinfoil asks: "I am the admin at a small company looking at the B2B & B2C markets and also (in the more immediate future) remote connections to our database over the net. The main server, and the server that the DB is kept on is a Novell Netware 5 server. I don't want to pipe the Internet connection (SDSL) into this. Rather, I want a box in-between to act as a gateway. So, my question is this: Will FreeBSD (which I am a relative newbie with) connect to and act as a good and secure gateway to the Novell box? And what about VPN (or other similar options). I do not want another Novell box as that would be even worse. Thoughts?"

1 of 5 comments (clear)

  1. BorderManager by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

    While you stated that you didn't want another Novell box (for unknown reasons - cost?), what you really should consider using is Border Manager.

    Not only will the VPN work seamlessly with the Novell client already on your users' PC's, the proxy cache is also the fastest in the Intel-based world (see the Cache Bake-Off earlier this year - notice all the entries with "Novell ICS" as the software). Read the actual results - FreeBSD/squid loses by an embarassing margin.

    Use whatever firewall you like, but bear in mind - if you're a newbie with FreeBSD, you'll be hard pressed to learn all of the possible 'sploits and how to keep yourself from accidentally leaving something open or misconfigured when your attackers are probably quite BSD-savvy.

    Novell's firewall is really quite good, provided (of course) that it's carefully configured and you stay on top of patches. And the VPN is well-integrated into NDS, strong, and easy to set up. But it is not by any stretch free.

    OpenBSD can make a great firewall, but you're still going to want the Novell VPN.

    - wintermute