IPFire

IPFire is a hardened Linux appliance distribution designed for use as a firewall. IPFire is free software and developed by an open community, that improves it every single day. It was designed with both modularity and a high-level of flexibility in mind. You can easily deploy many variations of it, such as a firewall, a proxy server or a VPN gateway. The modular design ensures that it runs exactly what you’ve configured it for and nothing more. Everything is simple to manage and update through the package manager, making maintenance a breeze. It focusses on easy setup, good handling and high level of security. It is operated via an intuitive web-based interface which offers many configuration options for beginning and experienced system administrators.

The primary objective of IPFire is security. As there is of course no one, single way to achieve network security, it is important for a network administrator to understand their environment and what the term security means in the context of their own network. IPFire forms the base of a secure network. It has the power to segment networks based on their respective security levels and makes it easy to create custom policies that manage each segment. IPFire is maintained by developers who are concerned about security and who update the product regularly to keep it secure. IPFire ships with a custom package manager called Pakfire and the system can be expanded with various add-ons.