Untangle NG 15
Always a sucker for pretty graphical interfaces, Mayank Sharma simply couldn’t resist the lure of a Debian-based option.
Always a sucker for pretty graphical interfaces, Mayank Sharma simply couldn’t resist the lure of a dedicated Debian-based firewall option.
Untangle is one of several firewall appliances, but it stands out for its intuitive interface and an impressive portfolio of add-ons. Like all of its peers Untangle is designed to take over the entire disk, which makes it pretty easy to set up. On the downside, though, you can install the latest version on 64-bit machines. This is especially frustrating since the distro has modest requirements and repurposing an old 32-bit machine as a gateway server is one of the best uses for pushing underpowered hardware back into active duty.
We tested Untangle on a machine with two network cards; one connected to the internet and the other connected to the local network. Untangle calls this the Router mode, in which it acts as the router and the firewall. While this is how most people would use a firewall appliance, you can also deploy Untangle as a Transparent Bridge, so that it sits between the existing firewall and the internal network.
When setup is complete, Untangle prompts you to create a free account with www.untangle.com. While you can skip it and head to the dashboard, know that you’ll need the account for several critical tasks, such as for installing plugins. Untangle doesn’t ship with any components preinstalled, so you can’t do much with it without registering. As soon as you register, the distro offers to install a recommended set of packages for you. If you agree it’ll install over a dozen applications and services, including: a web filter; virus blocker; spam blocker; bandwidth control; application control; captive portal; WAN balancer; and a firewall, among others. Some apps that Untangle doesn’t install are an ad blocker, spam blocker, virus blocker, web cache and some others.
Hey good lookin’
Once the server has some apps, it’ll take you to a smartlooking dashboard. With over a dozen widgets, the dashboard helps you to analyse the traffic passing through the server and also gives out all sorts of stats. Admins will also appreciate the Reports app that monitors and prepares detailed and visually appealing reports about the server, as well as its different components.
Almost all the apps are preconfigured and run automatically after installation. If you want to manually configure them you can do so from under the Apps tab in the dashboard. Again, the interface makes the task pretty intuitive. For instance, the Firewall app makes the task of defining rules for firewalling traffic relatively straightforward and simple. Even the task of defining complex rules to get granular control over the network traffic by combining multiple parameters is made accessible with the use of relevant pull-down menus.
The alerts section of the Firewall app has been enhanced in this release. The Web Filter app also gets a new option that’ll redirect all searches in popular search engines through www.kidzsearch.com in order to sanitise the results for children. The major new addition is the inclusion of the Threat Prevention app that’ll help thwart threats from untrustworthy IP addresses.
The new app is included as a 14-day trial. In fact many apps, such as Web Filter, Bandwidth Control, and Policy
Manager are 14-day demos that’ll need to be purchased. You can buy the apps individually or get them all as part of the NG Firewall Complete package that starts at $25/ month. But even without the paid apps, Untangle retains its powerful firewalling features, along with several useful apps including Reports, Captive Portal, and OPENVPN.
While we love its intuitive interface and can’t find any technical faults, consider the fact that you can get similar functions from its peers without paying the premium. But if you don’t mind paying for Untangle’s point-and-click configurability, you’ll surely get your money’s worth.