NuFW brings IPv6 support

The Now User Filtering Works (NuFW) team has announced the initial release of the 2.2 stable branch. NuFW is a user-authenticating firewall that runs on top of the the Netfilter framework. This release includes several new features, including complete support for IPv6.

In addition to IPv6 support, the 2.2.0 release includes an advanced marking system for Quality of Service (QoS) and packet routing by user, application, or OS.

How is NuFW different from other firewalls? Well, your average garden-variety firewall is capable of filtering packets and/or setting QoS rules only by originating IP address. NuFW goes beyond this and provides filtering by user, application, and OS, which provides an administrator with lots of added flexibility.

NuFW is also capable of logging user activity into an SQL database. The NuFW daemons run on Linux and clients are available for Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and Mac OS X.

Release 2.2.0 also incorporates a Command mode for nuauth that allows the administrator to display connected users, disconnect selected users and list other connected NuFW firewalls. This release is backward compatible with 2.0. For detailed info on all the new features, see NuFW 2.2, what’s in the .2?. Downloads are available on the NuFW site.

Shirl Kennedy is the senior editor of theDocuTickerandResourceShelfweblogs as well as the “Internet Waves” columnist forInformation Today. She has been writing about technology since 1992.