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What is this page for?
This page is to clarify the relationship between DansGuardian, the original author of DansGuardian, the SmoothWall Company (SmoothWall Ltd) and its commercially supported products such as School Guardian and Guardian Secure Web Gateway.
What is SmoothWall Limited?
SmoothWall Ltd is a company that produces commercial security applications that were originally derived from the output of the SmoothWall Open Source Project. For more information on the SmoothWall Company, please read the company page, or visit smoothwall.com (the SmoothWall Company website).
What is SmoothWall Express?
SmoothWall Express is a Linux based firewall produced by the SmoothWall Open Source Project Team and is supported by volunteer members of the team. The Open Source Project is entirely funded by the SmoothWall Company and makes some use of its permanent staff to produce any security patches that may be needed, so ensuring they are quickly available. SmoothWall Express is designed with home users in mind and is completely free and Free to use, download and distribute under the terms of the GNU General Public License, under which it is licensed. For more information see smoothwall.org (the SmoothWall Open Source Project site).
What products does the SmoothWall Company produce?
It produces software and hardware appliance network security products, including web content filters, firewalls, UTM appliances, email and IM control monitors. These products have the same design goals, such as ease of use and flexibility, as the SmoothWall Open Source Project. The firewall products include many features not present in SmoothWall Express that are more appropriate to business users and organisations. These features include x509 certificate authenticated Virtual Private Networks (VPN), Web Content Filtering, Bandwidth Management (Quality of Service) and many more. Commercial support is available from more than 400 resellers worldwide.
What is DansGuardian?
DansGuardian is a command line web content filter engine daemon, implemented in C++, originally written by Daniel Barron with contributions by many people. It is currently developed and maintained by staff on the SmoothWall payroll, headed by Philip Allison. It is similar in nature and configuration to other binary daemons such as squid, bind, apache and so on. DansGuardian does require some knowledge of the Linux (or other unix-like) operating system and its utilities (such as editors) in order to be able to compile, install and configure the software. DansGuardian is copyright Daniel Barron. 'DansGuardian' is a registered trademark of Daniel Barron. It is distributed from the DansGuardian web site.
What is the relationship between DansGuardian and the SmoothWall Company?
DansGuardian was originally written by Daniel Barron (me). I am also Technical Director of SmoothWall. I have contributed, to a varying degree, code to all versions of SmoothWall GPL and the SmoothWall commercial versions. I am legally obliged to act in the interest of the company and this includes my work on DansGuardian.
What are Network Guardian, SmoothGuardian, School Guardian and the Guardian SWG?
They are commercially supported web content filters produced by the SmoothWall Company, for which I, Daniel Barron, was the principal software architect. They use a slightly modified version of the filter engine binary daemon as a small but critical part of entire application. This is used in much the same way as squid, apache or even the Linux kernel. What SmoothWall specialises in doing is providing the 'glue' that holds several Open Source components together to provide a sum greater than the components. SmoothGuardian is a plug-in web content filtering module for SmoothWall Firewall and UTM appliances. Network Guardian is a complete standalone web content filter that requires no other software to run on, it's akin to an Advanced Firewall with SmoothGuardian preinstalled and the firewall functions stripped out. School Guardian is a combined firewall and web content filter specially designed for schools and colleges. All three products are configured via a simple-to-use Graphical User Interface (GUI) that can be accessed from any web browser. Corporate Firewall, Advanced Firewall, Network Guardian and School Guardian include their own cut-down hardened version of Linux and are installed from a single CD. They do not require any knowledge of Linux to install, configure or use and include comprehensive installation and administration guides.
What are the differences between DansGuardian and Network Guardian?
That's a bit like saying what are the differences between the Linux kernel and Red Hat Linux. One is just a small but critical component of the other but with a huge amount of added services, software and so on. The following are some of the main features and benefits of Network Guardian that are not included with DansGuardian:
- 10 minute easy non-technical install
- No requirements for command line configuring, installing or compiling
- Superb web based easy to use interface
- Multiple user groups supports different filtering policies that can be varied by time of day which integrate with Microsoft Active Directory®, Novell eDirectory™ and other LDAP user authentication systems
- Log viewer with comprehensive filtering
- Very large range of reports (eg most blocked users, bandwidth utilization) with a template facility to create your own reports
- Detailed documentation and help pages that are kept up-to-date
- Full commercial support (telephone, email and worldwide reseller network)
- Daily incremental updates to the large categorised blocklists (URLs, domains, words+phrases, malicious content detection etc.)
- Automatic patching and upgrade system
- Settings backup system
DansGuardian is perfect for the technical computer enthusiast that maybe wants to make their own custom changes to the software. Network Guardian is for those that don't want to write, compile and maintain their own software - people who want ease of use, good management and reporting features, with the assurance of professional product support. See here for a better comparison of DansGuardian vs SmoothWall versions of Guardian.
Is the SmoothWall Open Source Project in competition with the SmoothWall Company?
No. The Project provides a fertile testing and development ground for bleeding edge features - some of which may get used by the company under the terms of the licence under which the code is contributed. SmoothWall Express is aimed at home users, while the SmoothWall commercial products are aimed at commercial companies and organisations. SmoothWall Express also acts as a very good advert for the company. SmoothWall Express is a fully complete, competent and secure solution - with over a million copies of Open Source SmoothWall having been downloaded; it is a major factor is promoting the SmoothWall brand and the quality of its products. We hope that network administrators will use and like SmoothWall Express, then recommend the commercial versions to their managers and bosses for use at work (or their company if they are a boss themselves).
Is DansGuardian in competition with the SmoothWall Company?
No. DansGuardian provides a fertile testing and development ground for bleeding edge features - some of which may get used by the company under the terms of the licence under which the code is contributed. DansGuardian is aimed at technical users with the time to build and maintain their own unix-like server, while the SmoothWall commercial products are aimed at companies and organisations who want a ready built appliance.
The DansGuardian web site also acts as a good advert for the filter engine used in Network Guardian and SmoothGuardian. It is hoped that people will try DansGuardian then progress on to Network Guardian.
All the development and testing that goes into DansGuardian is fed back into Network Guardian and SmoothGuardian just like the Open Source developments and testing of the Linux kernel, apache, squid, OpenSSH and so on are fed back in. The reverse is also true. Bugs found in Open Source software by the SmoothWall Company are fixed and fed back to the original project. For example a number of DansGuardian bugs have been fixed due to Network Guardian work. It's a win win situation. Everybody benefits - everyone has the freedom to choose what's best for them.
Which should we use? DansGuardian or Network Guardian?
I would generally prefer you to use Network Guardian in the same way I would prefer users to use SmoothWall Corporate Firewall rather than SmoothWall Express. But it is your own choice. You can either build-it-yourself with DansGuardian and squid and other components to create a custom built system, or use Network Guardian where a team of people have done this for you. Obviously if no one used DansGuardian it would not be very useful as the testing ground it is today!
DansGuardian is a very competent and fully functional filtering engine in its own right in the same way squid or apache are competent in their own field.
So why do you charge commercial users for DansGuardian?
Some people are inevitably going to use DansGuardian instead of Network Guardian in the same way they are going to use SmoothWall Express rather than SmoothWall Corporate Firewall - so why should I not make some extra pocket money for all the hard work I have done in my spare time? It helps to justify the huge amount of time I spent on it. Do you think giving DansGuardian away for free will make even more people use Network Guardian? Of course not. All you get with a DansGuardian download licence is just that - a download licence. I rely on an honour system that is simply akin to donations. All development on DansGuardian gets fed back into SmoothGuardian. Yet another reason for DansGuardian to be in the interest of the SmoothWall Company.
DansGuardian and the SmoothWall commercial versions are aimed at different markets in the same way that SmoothWall Express and SmoothWall Corporate Firewall are.
How can SmoothWall Resellers sell Network Guardian when you can get DansGuardian either for free (for non-commercial users) or cheaper?
That's a bit like saying why buy Corporate Firewall when the Linux kernel, squid, apache and so on are given away for free. It is because the SmoothWall Company has created a superb amalgamation of many powerful Open Source components and made them very easy to install and use. It is not necessary to have a good knowledge of Linux to be able to install and use the commercial SmoothWall products. Customers also benefit greatly from the services offered by the worldwide network of SmoothWall Resellers, such as consultancy, installation, to get fully maintained updates and support (eg telephone, email, on-site etc.), with the backing of the SmoothWall's full-time staff.
Next just compare the features of the two as listed above. Your average user of SmoothWall commercial products simply does not have the time to mess around on the command line - and needs the reassurance that if they have problems, professional support from the experts is just a phone call away.
Page last modified: 22 July 2009 14:01:09
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© 2001-2010 Daniel Barron
