IPCop 0.1.1 Review

Selanit writes "I just found a link on Distrowatch to a SecurityFocus Review of IP Cop 0.1.1. IP Cop is a fork of the GPL version of the Smoothwall Linux firewall distro, which had a review linked by Slashdot. Though it has a slick, easy install. and good features, a number of people had issues with Smoothwall.. IPCop has implemented shadow passwords to fix the security flaw, and their mission statement includes a provision that they will "Provide an enjoyable environment for the Public to discuss and request assistance." The to-do list of features for the upcoming 0.2 version is also interesting. "

Comments

Re:That's what routers are for.

[bleckywelcky]

But IPCop is trying to be an all-in-all solution for the small setup. I would think that an average home user with scarce extended OS skills wouldn't want to set up various routers to try and solve their problem.

Even still, I'm not sure exactly how you would set up something like this using standard routing procedures. Sure, if one connection is down, you could set up your network to refer to an alternate connection. But what if a connection is just temporarily bogged down by traffic. The alternate connection could maybe only hold half the bandwidth of the main connection, and you would want everyone to use the main connection as much as possible. But everyone who just sent requests will be referred to the alternate connection whilst the main connection clears up immediately therafter. This wouldn't work out too well (except for additional request, heh). And what if there is only one user using the connections currently, but they could stand to use more bandwidth than either connection could offer alone, but that they both could satisfy should they be used together? How would you (would it be possible?) go about setting up a routing system that would allow the user to use the bandwidth of both connections and make single request that would transverse both connections?