Firewall Builder

Shareware; $79.00

Current Version: 2.1.19 (May 20, 2008) / 4.0.1 (June 4, 2010)

Firewall Builder is multi-platform firewall configuration and management tool. It consists of a GUI and set of policy compilers for various firewall platforms. Firewall Builder uses object-oriented approach, it helps administrator maintain a database of network objects and allows policy editing using simple drag-and-drop operations. Firewall Builder currently supports iptables, ipfilter, OpenBSD PF and Cisco PIX.

Being truly vendor-neutral, Firewall Builder can generate configuration file for any supported target firewall platform from the same policy created in its GUI. This provides for both consistent policy management solution for heterogeneous environments and possible migration path.

Version 4.0.0 added/changed the following:

• "Single rule compile"
• Changes and improvements in the GUI
• Password caching in built-in installer
• Customazable templates ("configlets")
• Changes in the structure of generated Linux firewall script
• Support for high availability firewall configurations
• Support for OpenWRT
• Branching rules in NAT
• Incremental management of IP addresses, VLAN, bridge and bonding interface configuration
• Built-in installer is much faster when working with Cisco routers and ASA (PIX) firewalls
• Using EEM for automatic rollback of the configuration changes with Cisco routers
• Automatic generation of "mirrored" rules for Cisco routers

Version 4.0.1 introduces a huge number of additional bugfixes, which are detailed in the online release notes.

The download packages work in evaluation mode for 30 days and can be unlocked with a license file. Please note: Mac OS X packages are built on Intel-based Mac running Leopard. The author has been having difficulties building universal packages with QT so these will not work on PowerPC Macs, so the old PowerPC version (2.1.19) remains available.