Standalone internet 'Gateway' for Parental Filtering and QoS

[spot]

Hi,

I'm currently using Norton Online Family for parental filtering, but am too aware of the limitations .
I'm interested in getting a program like a complete security hardened linux setup to run on a bare bones old pc which will be imbetween the ADSL modem and the wireless router.
This would mostly be for parental control and logging all activity but also some QoS issues.
Features desired-

• Filtering settings based on device mac and user. I want to be able to use the internet unimpeded, dont mind if I have to log on to the gateway. Some devices eg ipods must be able to connect without logging on but might have heavy restrictions based on them.
• General parental control things.
• Logging of virtually everything.
• Be able to prevent circumvention by the use of secure connections to anonimyzing websites (I think this might be by providing a proxy as the only way for https)
• Bandwidth limitations so one user/device cannot hog all the bandwidth.
• Logging of total data per device and/or user for the current month
• (opt) shaping if a device is over the limit

This is a fairly big ask, but if anything is close to this (or especially if its continually being improved) I would be very interested in hearing about it - even ones that cost some $.

Thanks

[J_L]

I think a good gateway will do the job. Check out 5.5. here: http://www.techsupportalert.com/cont....htm#Firewalls

[Remah]

J_L is right that a gateway is likely to be the best solution. And the BF Security List is always a great place to start.

From memory, the main options are likely to be:

• pfSense. I've used FreeBSD applications to do most of what you want and know that you should be able to do all that you want for free. pfSense is the main solution.
  
• m0n0wall (FreeBSD-based) if you have an embedded x86 PC.
  
• Untangle Lite usually requires more hardware than pfSense

Other products will require paid options, usually for at least the content filtering, although most of what you want should be free:

• Smoothwall has no Web Security/Content Filtering unless you get the paid version.
• ClearOS content filter is also a paid option.
• Endian
• Vyatta

You are likely to use filtering applications like Dansguardian or Squid whatever the main solution you choose.

Zeroshell (http://www.zeroshell.net/eng/) is another possibility which should probably be in our gateway list.

SafeSquid may also do what you want but it is only free for up to three users.

[J_L]

Thanks, will add Zeroshell.

[Remah]

spot,
On reflection, I should add:

• Wikipedia is a good place to see the many options you can consider
• I recommend pfSense as "best" because it is lowest cost but Linux solutions are more popular, using say Untangle
• You can also use embedded software on a router (particularly Linksys or broadcom-based models) instead of a PC. I've seriously looked at doing that since I canned my own gateway (I also used FreeBSD/pfSense as a router using a PC with several network cards). A router is quiet and small, I've already got one, and it means I don't add another device to my network. DD-WRT and Tomato are probably the two most popular (Linux-based).
• If you're going to do comprehensive content filtering with several users then you should probably put that on a PC separate from other network functions.

J_L,
Here's some more:
5.5 Gateway

• Freesco router/firewall
• MikroTik RouterOS embedded router/firewall

5.6 Router

• OpenWRT
• RouterTech
• Sveasoft

[J_L]

Thanks, will check out later.