Vyatta: A high-end Linux-based firewall and router

. . . keeping an eye on the penguin

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Sep. 04, 2007

Let's play a Linux word association game. Red Hat is to Microsoft as Vyatta is to Cisco.

"Vyatta," you ask? This small, San Mateo, Calif.-based business is trying to show that you can use open source to deliver high-level networking services on a competitive basis with network giant Cisco in the same way that Red Hat showed it could be done with Microsoft's server business.

Vyatta is also a Debian-Linux based distribution that's designed to take garden-variety x86 hardware and transform it into an enterprise-class router and firewall. Of course, any Linux server distribution can provide basic router and firewall resources with netfilter and iptables. Vyatta goes well beyond these basics.

This Linux also includes standard WAN (wide area network) routing protocols such as RIP (Routing Information Protocol), OSPFv2 (Open Shortest Path First version 2), and BGPv4 (Border Gateway Protocol version 4). It also include intranet networking protocols such as DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol), VRRP (Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol) and SNMP.

In addition to these enterprise networking features, Vyatta argues that the complexity and list of legacy issues in Cisco's IOS (Internetwork Operating System) coupled with its reliance on specialized processors and hardware have slowed Cisco's ability to innovate to a crawl. Cisco proprietary hardware includes processors that are slower than today's x86-based servers and the majority of key routing, security and voice functionality (once the key to its dominance) are available in the public domain in the form of open-source community code.

According to a Vyatta-sponsored test by The Tolly Group, Vyatta Linux, running on a Dell PowerEdge 860, was twice as fast, at half the cost, of a Cisco 2821 router at Layer 3 Ethernet, zero-loss throughput. In short, Vyatta's argument is that its Linux, or its Linux on a pre-configured x86 server can do almost everything a Cisco router can do only faster and for less upfront and maintenance money.

Should you believe them? Well, as is always the case with Linux, you can download this special purpose distribution and find out for yourself.

The newest version, Vyatta Community Edition 2.2 (code name Camarillo) was released on Sept. 2. According to the release notes, this version adds BGP enhancements - Per-peer BGP routing policies and MD5 authentication for BGP.

Camarillo also includes NAT (Network Address Translation) usability improvements. For example, the "type" and "translation-type" options have been consolidated into a single attribute for ease of configuration. In addition, the Configuration Guide has been enhanced with a greater number and variety of examples for NAT. There has also been improvements to DHCP server and DHCP relay; new options for "show version," enhanced to provide additional information about packages.

To download the Vyatta community version, you first need to register with the company. After that you can either download the 116MB ISO image or a VMware Virtual Appliance of Vyatta 2.2.

The company also offers paid support options and servers and appliances already set up with Vyatta 2.2 for drop-in server/firewall installations.

Steven J. Vaughan Nichols

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