General Questions

I run a m0n0wall since about 2 years and I am a big fan of it. However I badly miss a feature which is a realtime connection monitor of ingoing and outgoing connections. I found a software called Fireplotter, which I would be very happy to be able to use: http://www.fireplotter.com

FirePlotter is a real-time session monitor or connection monitor for your Cisco or FortiNet firewall. Click to see a 3 minute FirePlotter Demonstration here http://www.fireplotter.com/FPDemo/FPDemo.html

My question: is there any way to make m0n0wall somehow compatible with Fireplotter, .i.e. providing a gateway to act like a "Cisco PIX/ASA" Firewall or a "FortiNet FortiGate" Firewall?

Or is there any alternative for windows based PCs with features like Fireplotter?

Maybe this could be done by extending m0n0's SNMP abilities. See here : http://forum.m0n0.ch/index.php/topic,1158.0.html

I'm guessing it must poll the state table on the firewalls to get that info. The application itself could be modified to work with m0n0wall, modifying m0n0wall to make it act like a PIX or Fortinet in that regard would be very difficult.

SNMP isn't a good solution for something of this nature. Adding Netflow would be.

I just read

http://blog.pfsense.org/?p=125

#  Chris Buechler Says:
July 25th, 2007 at 8:34 pm

For bandwidth accounting on a per-user basis, pfflowd has been available in packages for ages now. It exports NetFlow, and there are many packages available to collect and report on NetFlow data (it’s what Cisco routers use).

Would there be a chance to use that on m0n0wall or do I have to migrate to pfsense? I would much pefer to run m0n0wall because of its ability to run (e.g. on a Soekris board) from a Compactflash card.

I just read

http://blog.pfsense.org/?p=125

#  Chris Buechler Says:
July 25th, 2007 at 8:34 pm

For bandwidth accounting on a per-user basis, pfflowd has been available in packages for ages now. It exports NetFlow, and there are many packages available to collect and report on NetFlow data (it’s what Cisco routers use).

Would there be a chance to use that on m0n0wall or do I have to migrate to pfsense? I would much pefer to run m0n0wall because of its ability to run (e.g. on a Soekris board) from a Compactflash card.

pfsense has an embedded version for CF as well.

This particular package, pfflowd will only work with pf firewalls and hence not m0n0wall. But there are equivalent packages that could be made to work with m0n0wall.

I might see about adding this myself at some point.

I really would be interested to see an option for a real time connection monitor with m0n0wall and I am glad you are positively thinking about adding this in the (hopefully not too far) future! I really would very much appreciate that your great work and I am certain others would do, too. Best regards from France!