How to Install Endian Firewall Community 2

A firewall is an additional layer of security between your local network and the Internet.

Endian Firewall Community 2 is an open-source bundle that includes firewall software and an embedded Linux distribution. It's meant to be installed on a computer that will be used for nothing other than acting as a firewall between your local network and the Internet. The installation process will format the hard drive of the computer you install it on. You need a second computer with a Web browser to access the configuration panels of the firewall after its installation to complete the setup.

Difficulty:

Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• PC with multiple network cards
• PC with network card and Web browser
• Blank CD-ROM
• 2 Ethernet cables
• Ethernet switch or router

Installing Firewall Software

1. Navigate to endian.com. Hover over the "Community" menu option and click "Download." Click the "Endian Firewall Community" link next to the disc icon to download the Endian Firewall ISO.

2. Put the blank CD-ROM into your PC's CD-ROM drive, and copy the ISO over to the CD-ROM. Double-click on the ISO file, and click "Burn Disk Image" from the menu that comes up. Select the drive with the blank CD in it.

3. Configure the BIOS on the PC on which you're installing Endian Firewall, the one with the multiple network cards, so that the boot order begins with the floppy disk and then goes to the optical drive and then the hard drive. Put the CD-ROM drive in the PC on which you're installing Endian Firewall and reboot the machine.

4. Answer the questions as they come up on the setup screens. One part of the process is setting up the local area network that will be behind the firewall. Endian Firewall refers to this as the "green" area; the firewall itself is the yellow area and the rest of the Internet is the red area. Establish the range of acceptable Internet Protocol addresses of the computers in your local network on the green area and keep answering the questions until it says you're done. Eject the CD-ROM and the machine reboots, giving you a Linux login.

Configuring the Firewall

1. Connect an Ethernet cable from the firewall machine to the WAN port on an Ethernet switch. Connect a second Ethernet cable from one of the LAN ports on the Ethernet switch to the second computer.

2. Configure the non-firewall PC to use a fixed Ethernet address through "ipconfig"; this address needs to be on the same subnet as one of the addresses you entered into the green area questions. For example, if you designated one of the acceptable subnets as 192.168.63.1, set the fixed IP address of the second PC as 192.168.63.2.

3. Use "ipconfig" to ping 192.168.63.1, or whatever IP address you assigned to the firewall machine. If it doesn't work, change the socket the Ethernet cable is plugged into on the firewall computer, and try again until you successfully ping the firewall.

4. Launch your Web browser of choice on the non-firewall computer and log in to http://192.168.63.1, or whatever address you assigned the Endian Firewall box. You see the Web based management tools for the Endian Firewall. The default username is "admin" and you're prompted to set an administrator password.

5. Click on the "Network Configuration" link on the left-hand panel and assign IP addresses to each adapter on the firewall computer. Additional options can be found in the Endian Firewall configuration manual.

References

• Agileware.net: Endian Firewall Software Quick Start Guide

Resources

• Endian: Endian Firewall Community Download