14 DAY TRIAL // Some users might have heard of Vyatta, a Linux distribution that used to be employed as an operating system for routing, firewall, and VPN purposes. Well, that distro is gone, but the project has been forked and now we have a new OS called VyOS that shares some of the old code, but comes with new features.
The Linux kernel is a very versatile piece of software and developers are able to use it for many purposes. Getting it to work on routers or as firewall is just the tip of the iceberg and there are numerous Linux-based OSes out there that do this kind of thing.
This is not happening by accident. The Linux kernel provides much better security than anything else you might find, it's open source, and can be modified a lot easier than some of the proprietary solutions that are sold with commercial alternatives. This is a rather new project and the first version was made available back in December 2013. It doesn't mean that it's not stable or mature.
VyOS 1.1.0 has been dubbed Helium
Now that VyOS 1.1.0 has arrived, we get to see some of its features. Besides the obvious ones, like the fact that it can run on both regular platforms and virtual environments, and that it's completely free, there is a lot more to it.
"VyOS is a routing/firewall/VPN platform , forked from Vyatta, based on Debian GNU/Linux that runs on x86 hardware and many virtual machine hypervisors. If you are a network engineer/administrator or want to become one, you should. VyOS is more like IOS, JunOS and other enterprise platforms, not like SOHO appliances (D-Link, Linksys etc.). You need to understand what you are doing to configure it," reads the official website.
"Hardware requirements strongly depend on purpose your appliance is used for. For small branch offices Atom/C3 CPU and 256-384M RAM should be enough; for edge routers, large VPN concentrators and other high loaded appliances you should consider powerful servers."
The developers have explained that the new 1.1.0 release now comes with support for IGMP proxy, users are now able to disable PPPoE sessions (very useful for system administrators), OpenVPN clients that don't have a precise configuration can no longer connect, the IPv6 support has been improved, and numerous other features have been added.
You can check the release notes for this distro in the official announcement and you can download the ISO for VyOS 1.1.0 from Softpedia.