Firewall Issues? Call Out the Dogs!

Zonker’s Tool of the Month picks over at UnixReview.com are a pair of GUI tools used for administering iptables routers and firewalls. Known as Guidedog and Guarddog respectively, this pair of pooches will make your life a lot easier if you need to build your own firewall/router solution on a Linux box.

Zonker provides a great overview of the two tools, including a handful of screenshots for each. If you’ve ever used a GUI firewall before, such as the admin interface for products like a SonicWALL firewalls, you should have no trouble adapting. Otherwise, as long as you’re fairly familiar with the concepts of firewalling and routing, including protocols and port usage, you should have no trouble jumping right in.

The pair include several features as well, such as flexible port forwarding, the establishment of multiple zones across multiple interfaces, and a fair level of log control. They will output iptables commands/scripts when run by a normal user, and root users can use them to implement rules directly. Even if you’re not going to be setting up your own firewall, they’re a great way to learn firewall concepts and, by reading through their output, get familiar with the iptables syntax. Definitely worth a look.