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Portmaster 1.0 – Open-Source Network Monitor and Privacy Firewall

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Re: Portmaster 1.0 – Open-Source Network Monitor and Privacy Firewall

#91
post #25

Ooh, an article about portmaster(8)! Oh, not portmaster(8) 0 - https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=portmaster&sektion...

Also not PortMaster. https://archive.org/details/h42_Livingston_Enterprises_PortM...

Yeah that was my first thought and then: "do I still have an old portmaster around somewhere, will it run on that?"

choosing the same name as a revered network router (the first one really affordable by mere mortals) may alienate some old timers

Re: Portmaster 1.0 – Open-Source Network Monitor and Privacy Firewall

#92
Livingston Portmaster 3 PM3A-1E is a RAS (Remote Access Server) that:

- terminates one 1E line (30 B-channels)

- provides ISDN dial-up on those channels

- provides DSP based modems in case analog modem calls should be handled

This was a key component of being an ISP in early days.

https://osmocom.org/projects/retronetworking/wiki/Livingston...

Re: Portmaster 1.0 – Open-Source Network Monitor and Privacy Firewall

#93

Livingston Portmaster 3 PM3A-1E is a RAS (Remote Access Server) that: - terminates one 1E line (30 B-channels) - provides ISDN dial-up on those channels - provides DSP based modems in case analog modem calls should be handled This was a key component of being an ISP in early days. https://osmocom.org/projects/retronetworking/wiki/Livingston...

[deleted]

Re: Portmaster 1.0 – Open-Source Network Monitor and Privacy Firewall

#95

Livingston Portmaster 3 PM3A-1E is a RAS (Remote Access Server) that: - terminates one 1E line (30 B-channels) - provides ISDN dial-up on those channels - provides DSP based modems in case analog modem calls should be handled This was a key component of being an ISP in early days. https://osmocom.org/projects/retronetworking/wiki/Livingston...

I just bought an AS5300 to play with a few months ago to see if I could get 56k modem connections to work over VOIP.

SIP channels -> voice card -> out a T1 (network) -> in another T1 (CPE) -> to DSP modem.

(Or dialout, DSP modem -> out a T1 (CPE) -> in a T1 (network) -> voice card -> SIP.

It just -doesn't quite- work. I can get 14400 no problem, but V.90 doesn't seem to entrain. Still troubleshooting (could be undesirable jitter buffer settings on my ISP side).

I just barely missed end-of-sales of ISDN BRI in my area which could have been useful for get to the PSTN at high quality.

Re: Portmaster 1.0 – Open-Source Network Monitor and Privacy Firewall

#96
post #16

Been looking for something like this for my windows computer. Little Snitch has been invaluable over the years but never found anything that covers it’s features for windows

If you are looking for a simple and light firewall (but still better than Windows Firewall), I recommend using Simplewall. It does not require a kernel extension and works with the API provided by Windows to do network filtering. https://github.com/henrypp/simplewall

Simplewall is amazing- and is impressive in how it's able to stop a lot of Microsoft's attempts to get Telemetry out.

I've been looking at Portmaster for a while- it seems to be a valid option for those of us who dabble with the idea of totally halting the telemetry despite it being designed to be hard to stop

Re: Portmaster 1.0 – Open-Source Network Monitor and Privacy Firewall

#97

I remember using Postmasters (PM2E) for router serial connectivity, good times.

Yeah, the ISP I founded in 1995 (elite.net) was a PM2ER for both dialup and routing with a Pentium 90 as the shell & web server. We quickly hit the 30 line limit and went up to the PRI-based Portmaster models. Fun and exciting times, just bringing a rural community online for the first time ever.

Oh yeah, the real Internet! We scaled up to an Ascend Max TNT with a DS3 before dial-up went south, ISDN stuck around quite a while though.

Re: Portmaster 1.0 – Open-Source Network Monitor and Privacy Firewall

#98
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks intriguing. A few questions: (1) Are you planning on having support for more than 5 devices at a future point? (2) Will you have any features to support parents protection of their children? (3) How easy is it to integrate Safing into a home security stack, or an enterprise security stack? (4) Have you considered a one-time unlimited buy-in level in lieu of monthly? (5) Is this coming for iOS & MacOS? Thanks fo…

Thanks for your interest. (1) Are you planning on having support for more than 5 devices at a future point? 5 devices is what we estimate 1 user has (avg max). If there is demand, we will definitely add a plan to support more devices (or users). (2) Will you have any features to support parents protection of their children? We already collect NSFW filter lists to be activated in the settings. Otherwise such features…

>(1) Are you planning on having support for more than 5 devices at a future point?

>5 devices is what we estimate 1 user has (avg max). If there is demand, we will definitely add a plan to support more devices (or users).

I'd estimate for a family plan (my case) we'd have 5 users. Given that I am on HN and part of the technocrati collective we have a ton of devices, particularly once your iOS & Mac OS coverage kicks in too.

>(2) Will you have any features to support parents protection of their children?

>We already collect NSFW filter lists to be activated in the settings. Otherwise such features are tricky, as we need to start protecting against the person in front of the device, which is very hard. If you have suggestions, please share!

I think it would be person in front of the device, but a NSFW filter list is the min requirement, sounds like you already meet that.

>(3) How easy is it to integrate Safing into a home security stack, or an enterprise security stack?

>Can you elaborate on what exactly you have in mind? We don't offer any integrations with other system out of the box yet. We have APIs though that you can use.

Aggregating logs across all devices protected. I don't know if syslog would be best, as there are options

Unified console for centralized control of all instances would be a stretch goal

Re: Portmaster 1.0 – Open-Source Network Monitor and Privacy Firewall

#99
post #2

CTO and Co-Founder of Safing here. We're super excited to introduce version 1.0 of our network monitor and privacy firewall - Portmaster! On 1.1. this year, Portmaster was shared on HN and we hit front page [1]. With the help of our testers - many of you! - we were able to mature and develop Portmaster to hit this milestone. We're on a mission to bring privacy back to the masses. Privacy has to be easy & accessible f…

Which versions of Windows do you support? Also what happens with the firewall that ships with Windows when you install Safing?

Re: Portmaster 1.0 – Open-Source Network Monitor and Privacy Firewall

#100
post #90
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a welcome screen that informs you of Portmaster handling and securing DNS queries with the option to change the provider. But especially with a VPN the privacy is increased as it effectively becomes DNS-over-TLS/HTTPS-over-VPN. The VPN still sees your destination IP addresses, so the privacy improvement is not increased by a lot, but still.

Seems that there isn't an option to use the default ISP's DNS server. :(

You can use anything:

DNS Configuration Guide: https://docs.safing.io/portmaster/guides/dns-configuration

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