5 ms·

> If you are an individual, you can get the generic ISO by donating on Open Collective. And if you are contributing to VyOS, whether you are writing code, impro

> If you are an individual, you can get the generic ISO by donating on Open Collective. And if you are contributing to VyOS, whether you are writing code, improving the docs, or promoting VyOS publicly, we are happy to share pre-built images with you through contributor subscriptions. Finally, you can always build your own images — just follow these instructions. Sounds fair to me. Truth is there's no good alternative other than pfSense but if you want Linux (hw support etc) I don't know if you can do better than vyos for routers.

laurowyn 3y ago
If you want a web GUI, then pfSense or OPNSense are the general go tos. However, if you're comfortable with CLI and modifying configs in /etc/ then just running a bare metal Alpine Linux box is perfectly doable on a tiny box. iptables/nftables for firewall/NAT, dnsmasq/bind9 for dns, dnsmasq/isc-dhcp for DHCP. I've got a handful of these boxes all interlinked via wireguard, sharing routes via BGP using bird. Sure, you miss the config verification that VyOS provides, but does mean you learn the underlying tools themselves and that knowledge is portable to any other box running those systems. Personally, I don't quite understand why VyOS is a standalone distro when it could just be a config generator/checker package. Could even support multiple different underlying tools so if you want to use dnsmasq over bind9, or vice versa, it can provide a unified config interface for them.
- LeBit 3y ago
  How do you do zone based firewalls with alpine?
  - laurowyn 3y ago
    define zone based? If wanting internal and external subnets as "zones", iptables/nftables lets you match against incoming and outgoing interfaces. It would be trivial to make match against an incoming interface and jump to a zone specific chain. This is how I manage private subnets. fw-mark is also useful for setting routing rules. Can change which routing table is used by matching rules in iptables. If wanting to do more stateful things, I'm not aware of any default package, but setting a rule to send packets to an NFQUEUE and implementing some custom logic on that nfqueue would be rather trivial too. I'm sure eBPFs are useable in there somewhere too, but I've very little experience with them. Obviously iptables/nftables has its own issues, as seen in recent (and not so recent) posts about it being bypassable with raw sockets, but that tends to be host only and not when used as a gateway.
    - LeBit 3y ago
      > define zone based? https://support.vyos.io/en/support/solutions/articles/103000096269-zone-based-firewall-guide https://support.vyos.io/en/support/solutions/articles/103000... You create a _zone_. You name it and assign some interfaces to it. For my needs, I only assign 1 interface per zone. Then, you specify with which other zone that zone can receive traffic from. That also comes with the identification of a firewall rulesets to apply to that pair. So, `'Zone WAN (iface eth0) <- Zone LAN (iface eth1)' => apply fw LAN-TO-WAN` When you do that, the firewall rules become much simpler to write and maintain. But, a best practice is to assign every zone to every other zone. This soon becomes a combinatorial nightmare. When you want to add a zone, you have to create 2xN new zone configurations and 2xN new firewall rulesets.
      - laurowyn 3y ago
        So the equivalent of: iptables -N eth0toeth1; iptables -P eth0toeth1 DROP; iptables -A FORWARD -i eth0 -o eth1 -j eth0toeth1; iptables -A eth0toeth1 -m tcp -p 80 -j ACCEPT; # add any more rules Or, as you say to avoid exponential combinations, just make a chain for each zone (interface) and explicitly allow specific protocols/ports to target interfaces. Zones with multiple interfaces are just multiple rules to jump to the same zone chain.
  - lmz 3y ago
    You can check awall: https://git.alpinelinux.org/awall/about/ https://git.alpinelinux.org/awall/about/ for an abstraction over iptables
    - LeBit 3y ago
      This looks interesting, but nowhere near VyOS abilities and documentation. I can't even find anything related to policy-based routing (PBR).
- nullify88 3y ago
  isc-dhcp is EOL. I'd suggest using kea-dhcp from the same ISC. I believe there could be a script or some kind of migration path from isc-dhcp to Kea. I've been using Kea in production with no problems. https://www.isc.org/blogs/isc-dhcp-eol/ https://www.isc.org/blogs/isc-dhcp-eol/
  - sofixa 3y ago
    I really wish there was a better option for a Linux DHCP server. At my past job we were using isc-dhcp and it was absolutely horribly showing it's age (md5 api "keys", bespoke socket-based API "protocol", most things impossible to do via the "API", clustering that didn't really work, etc.). Kea is barely an improvement, with oddities such as being written in C++ and requiring recompiling for plugins, or an extremely weird API. It's obvious is still written by the same old folks who have no idea how software is supposed to work in the 2020s. We need something modern - easy clustering, modern API, event stream, gRPC-based plugins, etc. (And yes, I have thought about developing it myself, it's on my pile of TODO)
  - sp0ck 3y ago
    One remark. Kea doesn't have some of functionalities provided by ISC-DHCP. If you use a lot of dhcp-eval and make decisions based on different dhcp options content kea is still a no-go since there is no workarround. Usually at ISP level dhcp is one puzzle of much more complicated system. I tried if few times and every time I stuck on something and messagefrom developers was: this isc-dhcp feature is not supported. This was huge national scale ISP and bypassing those limitations means a lot of $ to adapt surrounding systems providing input to isc-dhcp LDAP DB in its own config style.
- numpad0 3y ago
  > iptables/nftables for firewall/NAT, dnsmasq/bind9 for dns, dnsmasq/isc-dhcp for DHCP. or `vbash` in VyOS for all of those :/
  - laurowyn 3y ago
    except vbash drives those tools by generating configs. But this is my point; why is VyOS a distro when vbash could just be a package available to other distros?
the_third_wave 3y ago
> Truth is there's no good alternative other than pfSense but if you want Linux (hw support etc) I don't know if you can do better than vyos for routers. OpenWRT comes to mind, I've been using it for decades on first dedicated hardware, the last 6 years running in a container on a ProxMox box (DL380 G7). It has no problems whatsoever routing at (gigabit) line speed using a few megabytes of RAM and a few cores. Configuration is mostly declarative using UCI although it also offers the freedom (which comes with responsibility) to use scripts. I use the latter to deal with edge cases which lie outside of the purview of normal routing operations, e.g. triggered actions related to the use of Timelimit [1] on my daughter's phone, IoShit things with special needs, etc. [1] https://codeberg.org/timelimit/timelimit-server https://codeberg.org/timelimit/timelimit-server
synergy20 3y ago
openwry,ipfire,ipcop,all do the job well
- sp0ck 3y ago
  Definitely they are not. I couldn't find any other open source routing software that has support for following very popular features on enterprise level: - MPLS - VXLAN - IS-IS This is must have to be considered by any ISP/enterprise where networking is their core business. vOS has all three. More or less buggy but they are here.
  - synergy20 3y ago
    Enterprise level I assume some will buy commercial equipment with support etc. The above mentioned I feel are good enough for home and SOHO(small businesses).
    - zrail 3y ago
      Yeah, the cost of buying equipment and licenses supported by a team with a phone number is immaterial for most enterprise-level organizations.
  - circularfoyers 3y ago
    How about OpenWRT? It appears it has support for MPLS[1], IS-IS[2], and VXLAN[3]. Where VXLAN appears to even have a LuCI component[4]. [1] https://openwrt.org/packages/pkgdata/kmod-mpls https://openwrt.org/packages/pkgdata/kmod-mpls [2] https://openwrt.org/packages/pkgdata/frr https://openwrt.org/packages/pkgdata/frr [3] https://openwrt.org/packages/pkgdata/vxlan https://openwrt.org/packages/pkgdata/vxlan [4] https://openwrt.org/packages/pkgdata/luci-proto-vxlan https://openwrt.org/packages/pkgdata/luci-proto-vxlan
sp0ck 3y ago
You have very narrow definition of what software router/service router is. Firewall and two interfaces and VPN server is not the best scenario :) All those systems (pfSense etc) are for private/soho use. Big networks need stuff that is not avaiable on mentioned platforms like i.e BFD (Bidirectional Forwarding Detecion), MPLS (MultiProtocol Label Switching), VXLAN (Virtual Extensible LAN), IS-IS routing protocol or Segment Routing. If anyone knows other Opensource routing software that support all of this - let me know. To my knowledge vOS is the only one.
- ihattendorf 3y ago
  DANOS [0] supports all of those I believe. It's essentially AT&Ts continued development of Vyatta (a subset of it at least) with a DPDK dataplane + multiple other enhancements. [0]: https://www.danosproject.org/ https://www.danosproject.org/

laurowyn 3y ago

If you want a web GUI, then pfSense or OPNSense are the general go tos. However, if you're comfortable with CLI and modifying configs in /etc/ then just running a bare metal Alpine Linux box is perfectly doable on a tiny box. iptables/nftables for firewall/NAT, dnsmasq/bind9 for dns, dnsmasq/isc-dhcp for DHCP. I've got a handful of these boxes all interlinked via wireguard, sharing routes via BGP using bird. Sure, you miss the config verification that VyOS provides, but does mean you learn the underlying tools themselves and that knowledge is portable to any other box running those systems. Personally, I don't quite understand why VyOS is a standalone distro when it could just be a config generator/checker package. Could even support multiple different underlying tools so if you want to use dnsmasq over bind9, or vice versa, it can provide a unified config interface for them.

LeBit 3y ago
How do you do zone based firewalls with alpine?
- laurowyn 3y ago
  define zone based? If wanting internal and external subnets as "zones", iptables/nftables lets you match against incoming and outgoing interfaces. It would be trivial to make match against an incoming interface and jump to a zone specific chain. This is how I manage private subnets. fw-mark is also useful for setting routing rules. Can change which routing table is used by matching rules in iptables. If wanting to do more stateful things, I'm not aware of any default package, but setting a rule to send packets to an NFQUEUE and implementing some custom logic on that nfqueue would be rather trivial too. I'm sure eBPFs are useable in there somewhere too, but I've very little experience with them. Obviously iptables/nftables has its own issues, as seen in recent (and not so recent) posts about it being bypassable with raw sockets, but that tends to be host only and not when used as a gateway.
  - LeBit 3y ago
    > define zone based? https://support.vyos.io/en/support/solutions/articles/103000096269-zone-based-firewall-guide https://support.vyos.io/en/support/solutions/articles/103000... You create a _zone_. You name it and assign some interfaces to it. For my needs, I only assign 1 interface per zone. Then, you specify with which other zone that zone can receive traffic from. That also comes with the identification of a firewall rulesets to apply to that pair. So, `'Zone WAN (iface eth0) <- Zone LAN (iface eth1)' => apply fw LAN-TO-WAN` When you do that, the firewall rules become much simpler to write and maintain. But, a best practice is to assign every zone to every other zone. This soon becomes a combinatorial nightmare. When you want to add a zone, you have to create 2xN new zone configurations and 2xN new firewall rulesets.
    - laurowyn 3y ago
      So the equivalent of: iptables -N eth0toeth1; iptables -P eth0toeth1 DROP; iptables -A FORWARD -i eth0 -o eth1 -j eth0toeth1; iptables -A eth0toeth1 -m tcp -p 80 -j ACCEPT; # add any more rules Or, as you say to avoid exponential combinations, just make a chain for each zone (interface) and explicitly allow specific protocols/ports to target interfaces. Zones with multiple interfaces are just multiple rules to jump to the same zone chain.
- lmz 3y ago
  You can check awall: https://git.alpinelinux.org/awall/about/ https://git.alpinelinux.org/awall/about/ for an abstraction over iptables
  - LeBit 3y ago
    This looks interesting, but nowhere near VyOS abilities and documentation. I can't even find anything related to policy-based routing (PBR).
nullify88 3y ago
isc-dhcp is EOL. I'd suggest using kea-dhcp from the same ISC. I believe there could be a script or some kind of migration path from isc-dhcp to Kea. I've been using Kea in production with no problems. https://www.isc.org/blogs/isc-dhcp-eol/ https://www.isc.org/blogs/isc-dhcp-eol/
- sofixa 3y ago
  I really wish there was a better option for a Linux DHCP server. At my past job we were using isc-dhcp and it was absolutely horribly showing it's age (md5 api "keys", bespoke socket-based API "protocol", most things impossible to do via the "API", clustering that didn't really work, etc.). Kea is barely an improvement, with oddities such as being written in C++ and requiring recompiling for plugins, or an extremely weird API. It's obvious is still written by the same old folks who have no idea how software is supposed to work in the 2020s. We need something modern - easy clustering, modern API, event stream, gRPC-based plugins, etc. (And yes, I have thought about developing it myself, it's on my pile of TODO)
- sp0ck 3y ago
  One remark. Kea doesn't have some of functionalities provided by ISC-DHCP. If you use a lot of dhcp-eval and make decisions based on different dhcp options content kea is still a no-go since there is no workarround. Usually at ISP level dhcp is one puzzle of much more complicated system. I tried if few times and every time I stuck on something and messagefrom developers was: this isc-dhcp feature is not supported. This was huge national scale ISP and bypassing those limitations means a lot of $ to adapt surrounding systems providing input to isc-dhcp LDAP DB in its own config style.
numpad0 3y ago
> iptables/nftables for firewall/NAT, dnsmasq/bind9 for dns, dnsmasq/isc-dhcp for DHCP. or `vbash` in VyOS for all of those :/
- laurowyn 3y ago
  except vbash drives those tools by generating configs. But this is my point; why is VyOS a distro when vbash could just be a package available to other distros?

the_third_wave 3y ago

> Truth is there's no good alternative other than pfSense but if you want Linux (hw support etc) I don't know if you can do better than vyos for routers. OpenWRT comes to mind, I've been using it for decades on first dedicated hardware, the last 6 years running in a container on a ProxMox box (DL380 G7). It has no problems whatsoever routing at (gigabit) line speed using a few megabytes of RAM and a few cores. Configuration is mostly declarative using UCI although it also offers the freedom (which comes with responsibility) to use scripts. I use the latter to deal with edge cases which lie outside of the purview of normal routing operations, e.g. triggered actions related to the use of Timelimit [1] on my daughter's phone, IoShit things with special needs, etc. [1] https://codeberg.org/timelimit/timelimit-server https://codeberg.org/timelimit/timelimit-server

synergy20 3y ago

openwry,ipfire,ipcop,all do the job well

sp0ck 3y ago
Definitely they are not. I couldn't find any other open source routing software that has support for following very popular features on enterprise level: - MPLS - VXLAN - IS-IS This is must have to be considered by any ISP/enterprise where networking is their core business. vOS has all three. More or less buggy but they are here.
- synergy20 3y ago
  Enterprise level I assume some will buy commercial equipment with support etc. The above mentioned I feel are good enough for home and SOHO(small businesses).
  - zrail 3y ago
    Yeah, the cost of buying equipment and licenses supported by a team with a phone number is immaterial for most enterprise-level organizations.
- circularfoyers 3y ago
  How about OpenWRT? It appears it has support for MPLS[1], IS-IS[2], and VXLAN[3]. Where VXLAN appears to even have a LuCI component[4]. [1] https://openwrt.org/packages/pkgdata/kmod-mpls https://openwrt.org/packages/pkgdata/kmod-mpls [2] https://openwrt.org/packages/pkgdata/frr https://openwrt.org/packages/pkgdata/frr [3] https://openwrt.org/packages/pkgdata/vxlan https://openwrt.org/packages/pkgdata/vxlan [4] https://openwrt.org/packages/pkgdata/luci-proto-vxlan https://openwrt.org/packages/pkgdata/luci-proto-vxlan

sp0ck 3y ago

You have very narrow definition of what software router/service router is. Firewall and two interfaces and VPN server is not the best scenario :) All those systems (pfSense etc) are for private/soho use. Big networks need stuff that is not avaiable on mentioned platforms like i.e BFD (Bidirectional Forwarding Detecion), MPLS (MultiProtocol Label Switching), VXLAN (Virtual Extensible LAN), IS-IS routing protocol or Segment Routing. If anyone knows other Opensource routing software that support all of this - let me know. To my knowledge vOS is the only one.

ihattendorf 3y ago
DANOS [0] supports all of those I believe. It's essentially AT&Ts continued development of Vyatta (a subset of it at least) with a DPDK dataplane + multiple other enhancements. [0]: https://www.danosproject.org/ https://www.danosproject.org/