4 ms·

This seems like something that would be great for putting together a secure router. It seems that most router manufacturers that use an open source OS use Linux

This seems like something that would be great for putting together a secure router. It seems that most router manufacturers that use an open source OS use Linux. I have yet to see an OpenBSD based commercial offering.

pakled_engineer 11y ago
https://www.esdenera.com/en/esdenera-firewall https://www.esdenera.com/en/esdenera-firewall http://securityrouter.org/wiki/Pricing http://securityrouter.org/wiki/Pricing eracks.com offers preinstalled obsd firewalls Probably many others, but if you mean store bought consumer devices no idea but would be trivial to abstract away the OBSD complexity and offer secure remote updates if a company wanted. Why they don't, maybe it's cheaper or easier to find GNU/Linux engineers.
- A010 11y ago
  I feel like OpenBSD-based Firewall price is ridiculous compared with FreeBSD-based (i.e. pfSense). Honestly, what make OpenBSD-based fw more expensive like that? Or am I missing something?
  - rc4algorithm 11y ago
    It's really not that hard to install it yourself...
  - gonzo 11y ago
    Many, many firewall vendors (some based on OpenBSD, some on FreeBSD, some on linux) think they provide significant value. They really don't. Thus the growth of systems like pfSense.
jlg23 11y ago
This has been the modus operandi of many unix sysadmins for custom router/firewall setups. I did my first setup like this in 1999(?) for a museum office's router/firewall based on FreeBSD: * standard install, strip down kernel to bare minimum, configure everything * mount everything read only (/var memory backed) * set kern.securelevel to 3 (to disallow raw writes to disks, modifications to the firewall or un-/loading of kernel modules) * ignore the on-site admin when he begs for ssh access (because you of course disabled sshd) The system was first rebooted in, IIRC, 2004 when I had to change the ppp-config after they changed providers. Overall costs: about $100 for old hardware and about 1h of my time.

pakled_engineer 11y ago

https://www.esdenera.com/en/esdenera-firewall https://www.esdenera.com/en/esdenera-firewall http://securityrouter.org/wiki/Pricing http://securityrouter.org/wiki/Pricing eracks.com offers preinstalled obsd firewalls Probably many others, but if you mean store bought consumer devices no idea but would be trivial to abstract away the OBSD complexity and offer secure remote updates if a company wanted. Why they don't, maybe it's cheaper or easier to find GNU/Linux engineers.

A010 11y ago
I feel like OpenBSD-based Firewall price is ridiculous compared with FreeBSD-based (i.e. pfSense). Honestly, what make OpenBSD-based fw more expensive like that? Or am I missing something?
- rc4algorithm 11y ago
  It's really not that hard to install it yourself...
- gonzo 11y ago
  Many, many firewall vendors (some based on OpenBSD, some on FreeBSD, some on linux) think they provide significant value. They really don't. Thus the growth of systems like pfSense.

jlg23 11y ago

This has been the modus operandi of many unix sysadmins for custom router/firewall setups. I did my first setup like this in 1999(?) for a museum office's router/firewall based on FreeBSD: * standard install, strip down kernel to bare minimum, configure everything * mount everything read only (/var memory backed) * set kern.securelevel to 3 (to disallow raw writes to disks, modifications to the firewall or un-/loading of kernel modules) * ignore the on-site admin when he begs for ssh access (because you of course disabled sshd) The system was first rebooted in, IIRC, 2004 when I had to change the ppp-config after they changed providers. Overall costs: about $100 for old hardware and about 1h of my time.