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Open Source Routers
When you buy a computer today, you choose between the consumer-friendly platforms of Windows or Mac. Alternatives such as Linux are completely ignored.
The kernel of the Linux operating system is “open source,” meaning that no company owns or controls it completely. Commercial software packages are built around the Linux kernel (such as Red Hat), but the core platform remains free for anyone to revise, modify and authenticate.
Many folks are leery of open source software because society is programmed to embrace products from companies like Microsoft and Apple. Linux is universally celebrated for its rock-solid performance and stability, but it requires a little more effort to find layman-like support and help.
While open source operating systems may not be prevalent in the consumer computer market, the concept has successfully spread to other nooks and crannies of technology. Open source software powers servers all over the Internet, including routers.
Routing Around the Open Road
A router is a vital gatekeeper when accessing the Internet. Law firms and companies employ high-powered routers (e.g., from Cisco) to protect against rouge hackers and nefarious viruses. Home users typically use commercial routers from companies like Linksys, D-Link or Netgear that are liberally available from local big box electronics stores.
A router manages Internet traffic to multiple computers on an internal network. If you have a desktop and wireless laptop at home, the router receives the Internet pipe from the DSL or cable modem, and then disburses the traffic to each of the computers in the house. Routers offer important settings to block unwanted traffic and Web-borne viruses from getting into an internal network.
A commercially available router is limited to the settings and features that are built into the product. A router based on an open source platform, however, offers a broad set of options for customizing and tweaking the way that Internet traffic is handled. And because the software source code that powers the router is open source and available for anyone to modify, there is a built-in sense of trust ' nothing is hidden by proprietary business interests.
Open Source Costs
The biggest benefit by far with open source routers is cost. Open source routers are almost always available at a lower cost, sometimes as much as half of what one would pay for a commercial product. This is understandably why most people consider the open source alternative.
Open source software is often erroneously considered to be “free” as in it doesn't cost any money. And while the open source movement regularly uses the term “free software,” it refers to “free” as in “free speech,” not free as in $0. This ideology stems from the fact that the software is freely available for anyone to copy, reuse, and modify for the benefit of the greater community.
Routers and Doubters
Open source routers can be deployed in different configurations. On one end, you have the completely user supported projects such as pfSense (www.pfsense.com), IPCop (www.ipcop.org) and m0n0wall (www.m0n0.ch) that are based on basic distributions of FreeBSD (a version of Unix) or Linux.
In these models, you simply download the router software and supply your own, older, out-of-work PC for the hardware side. The software becomes the operating system of the computer that you're repurposing. Older processors run the software just fine, but you will need to add an additional network card so it can handle the appropriate routing tasks.
On the other end of the spectrum, there are commercial products such as SmoothWall (www.smoothwall.com) and Vyatta (www.vyatta.com) that are open-source at their core but commercially packaged. While you may still be able to download a free software version from these companies for testing purposes, they have developed a business around packaging their software into hardware. (On the consumer side, you can “hack” common routers from Linksys with software such as dd-wrt (www.dd-wrt.com.))
Why Go Open Source?
Originally, open source routers took a back seat to commercial products in terms of features. In recent years, however, open source routers have vastly improved their offerings to where they strongly compete with their commercial brethren.
After cost, the next major reason people turn to open source routers is flexibility. Where some features are non-existent on commercial routers, the open source alternative is almost infinitely customizable for whatever need you have.
Furthermore, many people report that open source routers provide better performance because they can install the software on a variety of different hardware platforms. In other words, they are not locked into the hardware supplied by a manufacturer.
Mark Manoukian, IT Director at Columbus, OH's Kegler Brown Hill & Ritter (www.keglerbrown.com), elected to go with the open source router software IPCop after he had budgeted $20,000-$30,000 for commercial equipment. He had an opportunity to test out IPCop before committing a big hunk of his budget, and discovered that IPCop did everything the firm needed in a router ' and more.
IPCop comes with a bevy of supported features “out of the box,” but supports many add-ons. Manoukian and his team have since added URL filtering and Web monitoring to their standard IPCop setup.
Manoukian states that the Linux or Unix distributions that power open source routers are better purposed for router operating systems, something for which Windows was not originally designed.
Manoukian explains that commercial-based routers are basically lightweight PCs with extra network adapters. So if the general public has all the pieces to make their own router (an older computer with extra network cards), then why pay for someone else to make them?
Manoukian recognizes that not everyone is comfortable with this approach, in which case he suggests considering a commercially packaged open source router (such as SmoothWall or Vyatta) that still costs much less than its proprietary cousins.
Keeping an Open Mind
The open source route is not for everyone. The majority of legal IT personnel are happy just buying from the shelf, plugging it in, and going along their merry way.
But for those who are interested in tinkering, an open source router is an excellent way to tweak and customize a firm's Internet traffic over and above what a commercial product typically allows.
There is a good amount of help available on the Web for supporting open source routers, but one should hesitate to venture into the open source storm unless he or she is comfortable with their knowledge of routers, Internet traffic and internal networks. For example, to successfully deploy an open source router, you'll need to be familiar with using a command-line interface (plus, having a strong knowledge of Unix/Linux certainly won't hurt.) While most open source routers offer a friendlier graphical interface available from an Internet browser, you will most certainly have to dig around the command line to squeeze the most functionality out of the router.
With Cisco reportedly holding 80% of the market share in enterprise-grade routers, the open source router field isn't much of a threat. But more and more people are starting to take note of the offerings in the open source router area, and its impact is growing.
Brett Burney is Principal of Burney Consultants LLC, where he works with law firms and corporations on managing electronic data for litigation matters. He is a member of this newsletter's Board of Editors and a frequent contributor to Law.com and Law Technology News magazine. You can e-mail him at [email protected] and visit his blog at www.ediscoveryinfo.com.
When you buy a computer today, you choose between the consumer-friendly platforms of Windows or Mac. Alternatives such as Linux are completely ignored.
The kernel of the Linux operating system is “open source,” meaning that no company owns or controls it completely. Commercial software packages are built around the Linux kernel (such as Red Hat), but the core platform remains free for anyone to revise, modify and authenticate.
Many folks are leery of open source software because society is programmed to embrace products from companies like
While open source operating systems may not be prevalent in the consumer computer market, the concept has successfully spread to other nooks and crannies of technology. Open source software powers servers all over the Internet, including routers.
Routing Around the Open Road
A router is a vital gatekeeper when accessing the Internet. Law firms and companies employ high-powered routers (e.g., from Cisco) to protect against rouge hackers and nefarious viruses. Home users typically use commercial routers from companies like Linksys, D-Link or Netgear that are liberally available from local big box electronics stores.
A router manages Internet traffic to multiple computers on an internal network. If you have a desktop and wireless laptop at home, the router receives the Internet pipe from the DSL or cable modem, and then disburses the traffic to each of the computers in the house. Routers offer important settings to block unwanted traffic and Web-borne viruses from getting into an internal network.
A commercially available router is limited to the settings and features that are built into the product. A router based on an open source platform, however, offers a broad set of options for customizing and tweaking the way that Internet traffic is handled. And because the software source code that powers the router is open source and available for anyone to modify, there is a built-in sense of trust ' nothing is hidden by proprietary business interests.
Open Source Costs
The biggest benefit by far with open source routers is cost. Open source routers are almost always available at a lower cost, sometimes as much as half of what one would pay for a commercial product. This is understandably why most people consider the open source alternative.
Open source software is often erroneously considered to be “free” as in it doesn't cost any money. And while the open source movement regularly uses the term “free software,” it refers to “free” as in “free speech,” not free as in $0. This ideology stems from the fact that the software is freely available for anyone to copy, reuse, and modify for the benefit of the greater community.
Routers and Doubters
Open source routers can be deployed in different configurations. On one end, you have the completely user supported projects such as pfSense (www.pfsense.com), IPCop (www.ipcop.org) and m0n0wall (www.m0n0.ch) that are based on basic distributions of FreeBSD (a version of Unix) or Linux.
In these models, you simply download the router software and supply your own, older, out-of-work PC for the hardware side. The software becomes the operating system of the computer that you're repurposing. Older processors run the software just fine, but you will need to add an additional network card so it can handle the appropriate routing tasks.
On the other end of the spectrum, there are commercial products such as SmoothWall (www.smoothwall.com) and Vyatta (www.vyatta.com) that are open-source at their core but commercially packaged. While you may still be able to download a free software version from these companies for testing purposes, they have developed a business around packaging their software into hardware. (On the consumer side, you can “hack” common routers from Linksys with software such as dd-wrt (www.dd-wrt.com.))
Why Go Open Source?
Originally, open source routers took a back seat to commercial products in terms of features. In recent years, however, open source routers have vastly improved their offerings to where they strongly compete with their commercial brethren.
After cost, the next major reason people turn to open source routers is flexibility. Where some features are non-existent on commercial routers, the open source alternative is almost infinitely customizable for whatever need you have.
Furthermore, many people report that open source routers provide better performance because they can install the software on a variety of different hardware platforms. In other words, they are not locked into the hardware supplied by a manufacturer.
Mark Manoukian, IT Director at Columbus, OH's
IPCop comes with a bevy of supported features “out of the box,” but supports many add-ons. Manoukian and his team have since added URL filtering and Web monitoring to their standard IPCop setup.
Manoukian states that the Linux or Unix distributions that power open source routers are better purposed for router operating systems, something for which Windows was not originally designed.
Manoukian explains that commercial-based routers are basically lightweight PCs with extra network adapters. So if the general public has all the pieces to make their own router (an older computer with extra network cards), then why pay for someone else to make them?
Manoukian recognizes that not everyone is comfortable with this approach, in which case he suggests considering a commercially packaged open source router (such as SmoothWall or Vyatta) that still costs much less than its proprietary cousins.
Keeping an Open Mind
The open source route is not for everyone. The majority of legal IT personnel are happy just buying from the shelf, plugging it in, and going along their merry way.
But for those who are interested in tinkering, an open source router is an excellent way to tweak and customize a firm's Internet traffic over and above what a commercial product typically allows.
There is a good amount of help available on the Web for supporting open source routers, but one should hesitate to venture into the open source storm unless he or she is comfortable with their knowledge of routers, Internet traffic and internal networks. For example, to successfully deploy an open source router, you'll need to be familiar with using a command-line interface (plus, having a strong knowledge of Unix/Linux certainly won't hurt.) While most open source routers offer a friendlier graphical interface available from an Internet browser, you will most certainly have to dig around the command line to squeeze the most functionality out of the router.
With Cisco reportedly holding 80% of the market share in enterprise-grade routers, the open source router field isn't much of a threat. But more and more people are starting to take note of the offerings in the open source router area, and its impact is growing.
Brett Burney is Principal of Burney Consultants LLC, where he works with law firms and corporations on managing electronic data for litigation matters. He is a member of this newsletter's Board of Editors and a frequent contributor to Law.com and Law Technology News magazine. You can e-mail him at [email protected] and visit his blog at www.ediscoveryinfo.com.
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