The Advisers Group

Monowall or m0n0wall is a open source internet gateway that can be run many different hardware platforms and has some fantastic features for the small and home office. We’ve been playing with it a lot here are sohoadvisers and I can tell you that this is a fantastic application.

I’ve used 3com Office Connect routers for years and I was looking for another but I did not want to spend any money. My 3com router was working fine but I wanted to have some Quality of Service (QOS) features which the 3com that I have did not support. QOS allows the router to prioritize traffic. Most users in the SOHO and SMB market would use the QOS feature to prioritize Voice over IP (VOIP) traffic. VOIP traffic would be traffic that a Vonage or other VOIP phone creates when making an internet call. The VOIP network traffic gets priority over email or web traffic to ensure that you get the best sound quality from your phone. Monowall does not call this QOS in their product, they call it traffic shaping. Traffic shaping is one of my favorite features of Monowall. Used correctly, it ensures that one person won’t hog all of the bandwidth. This feature alone was worth the switch for me.

You can also setup Monowall as a VPN server using IPSec or PPTP without the need for any additional hardware. You or your employees can connect from public access points, and still know your data is secure.

Another noteworthy feature is the Captive Portal feature. Captive Portal directs all web traffic to an authentication web page prior to accessing the internet. If the user can’t authenticate, they can’t get on the internet. This works just like a public Wi-Fi Hotspot does. You need to enter either a username and password or an authentication token. With this, you can make your own Wi-Fi Hotspot allowing your guests or clients to connect with Wi-Fi.