When I started working as a network administrator, I was given a task to create a gateway to share internet connection with the users on one public IP address. I wasted around a week to figure out that how this will work on Linux machine and at that time I was not aware of anything like this but I figured it out and used NAT with iptables to configure something to use internet on a single public IP address but what if you are working now a days in small office and has been given a task to create such a server like this, Its just about a matter of few moments or hours. Let me give a list of features of ClearOS by using it you can get; I can under understand that its a long list but you can find few very interesting built-in features in ClearOS; web based interface and many other features, check them out; Its free, Open source and fully featured gateway, server and have many more rich features;
Gateway Features
- Antimalware – Antivirus, Ant phishing, Antispyware
- Antis Pam
- Bandwidth Management
- Intrusion Protection, Intrusion Prevention, Intrusion Detection
- Protocol Filtering including Peer-to-Peer Detection
- Content Filter
- Web Proxy
- Access Control
Server Features
- Windows Networking with PDC Support
- File and Print Services
- Flex shares
- Groupware with Outlook Connector
- Mail Server – POP, IMAP, SMTP, Webmail, Retrieval
- Mail Filtering – Antis Pam, Antimalware, Greylisting, Quarantine
- Mail Archiving
- Database with MySQL
- Web Server with PHP Support
Directory Features
- Integrated LDAP for User and Group Management
- User Security Certificate Manager
Network Features
- Multi-WAN
- VPN – PPTP, IPSec, OpenVPN
- DMZ and 1-to-1 NAT
- Stateful Firewall
- Local DHCP and DNS Servers