Other Hardware firewalls with FreeBSD?

[ccc]

Hi,

Does anyone know if these days some hardware firewalls use FreeBSD as OS, they are mostly Linux?

 

[storvi_net]

Not FreeBSD, but OpenBSD: Genua Firewalls - https://www.genua.de/en/solutions/network-security.html.

 

[wblock@]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junos

 

[kpa]

There are some firewall appliances that are sold with pfSense preinstalled. pfSense of course is based on FreeBSD. For example: https://www.pfsense.org/hardware/#pfsense-store.

Those may look expensive but they come with bundled commercial support. Other stores have similar appliances for lower prices without the commercial support, for example: http://linitx.com/product/linitx-alix-2d4-lx800-2nicusb-pfsense-firewall-kit-entry-level/14271.

 

[Oko]

hi

Does anyoneknow if these days some hardware firewalls use FreeBSD as OS, they are mostly Linux?

The real big Juniper and Cisco have their own OS which runs only on their hardware only. The Juniper One Juno OS is a customized FreeBSD. Based upon the number of patches coming from Cisco engineers to OpenBSD PF and LibreSSL indicates that code is carefully scrutinized. Many research ideas are firstly implemented in OpenBSD which is unburdened with backward binary comparability. Sometimes that comes as a result of the fact that big companies who paid research fail to realize immediate commercial usefulness. A lot of research which is used as a base for the network stack in OpenBSD is paid by Japanese companies. OS X uses PF. Smaller appliances are typically BSD based. Linux IP tables are a clone of FreeBSD IPFW. Smoothwall is probably the most popular appliance based on IP tables. Google's chief security officer is Neil Provos who was a long time OpenBSD developer in his days as a Ph.D. student at the University of Michigan (he is German by birth). As we know Android is the widest used personal OS. I have seen many patches for LibreSSL from Google teams.

It is safe to say that Internet runs on BSD. Linux is irrelevant for the network.

 

[phoenix]

I can never remember which, but one of the big firewall appliance companies uses FreeBSD. I want to say Proofpoint, but I'm not 100% sure. [Edit: It's Check Point that I was thinking of.]

Ironport (SMTP firewall thingy) uses FreeBSD.

And the Nokia (I think, it's an N name) firewall appliance uses FreeBSD. It's basically just a GUI on top of IPFW. The local university used them in the past.

 

[DutchDaemon]

phoenix, it's probably in here: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_products_based_on_FreeBSD.

 

[phoenix]

Thanks. It was Check Point that I was thinking of. At least I got the Point part right.

 

[SirDice]

Yep, I remember working on a Nokia IP380 I was installing CheckPoint on and the way it booted looked awfully familiar

 

[ccc]

Thanks a lot for all the answers, but which OS uses Check Point on their firewalls?

 

[DutchDaemon]

Checkpoint IPSO (Nokia) uses FreeBSD 6: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_IPSO.

 

[gkontos]

Unfortunately, they are replacing it with GAiA which is based on Linux.