M0n0wall

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The correct title of this article is m0n0wall. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.

m0n0wall logo

m0n0wall is an embedded firewall distribution of FreeBSD, one of the BSD operating system descendants. It provides a small image which can be put on Compact Flash cards as well as on CDROMs and hard disks. It runs on a number of embedded platforms and generic PC's. The PC version can be run with just a LiveCD and a floppy disk to store configuration data, or on a single Compact Flash card (with an IDE adapter). This eliminates the need for a hard drive, which reduces noise and heat levels and also increases reliability because it eliminates the possibility of a physical hard drive crash.

m0n0wall provides for a web-based configuration and uses PHP exclusively for the GUI and bootup configuration. Additionally, it adopts a single XML file for configuration parameters.

Some functions of m0n0wall are:

Stateful packet filter firewall
IPsec and PPTP VPNs
Inbound and Outbound Network Address Translation
Captive portal
Traffic shaper
Inbound and Outbound port filtering.
Support for 802.1q compatible VLANs.
Multiple IP addresses on LAN and WAN ports.
Replacement for commercial router

[edit] Inclusion in Commercial Products

M0n0wall is used in some commercial hardware platforms, including Netgate and Logic Supply.

[edit] Derivatives

pfSense - Builds off of m0n0wall and adds plugins such as ntop, nmap, pure-ftpd, and more.
FreeNAS - Network-attached storage distro using FreeBSD 6 and the m0n0wall web gui.