Firewallin’
A thoroughly satisfying weekend of hackery—I finally got my home firewall set-up the way I wanted.
Some background: My ADSL is provided by the fantastically forward-thinking and geek-friendly ISP Speakeasy.net. They’re not cheap, but they have smart policies. As an example, I get four static IP addresses for my home network.
In the past I’ve used these by sticking my PCs directly onto the public internet. This has meant that I’ve needed to run software firewalls on each computer, all with different rules and ways of configuring them (Zone Alarm on Windows, Brickhouse on OSX and Firewall Builder on my Linux boxen.) This has been a pain.
But yesterday morning, a brainwave struck me: I have a Linksys WRT54G wireless router providing my wireless network. It’s powered by Linux, which means that it’s relatively easy to hack and make more powerful. Surely that could be my firewall.
So a toast, then, to the geniuses behind OpenWRT, a teensy little Linux distribution which sits on the router giving you oodles of room to build. Combined with the Shoreline Firewall running in Proxy ARP mode, I’ve been able to set everything up exactly as I’ve wanted to do for years.
I have to confess that I’ve frightened Joy this weekend, due to my occasional schoolgirl-ish giggles as I hit WhatIsMyIP.com and get the result I hoped for, or see Joy’s shared music pop up in my iTunes for the first time ever. But that’s the price she pays for marrying a complete unashamed spod.
