Vyatta is an enterprise-class Linux-based open-source router and firewall. “Vyatta solutions combine the features, performance, and reliability of an enterprise router and firewall with the cost savings, flexibility, and security of open source to introduce new levels of economics, choice, and control into the network.”
Origin - Home Page: USA - Vyatta
Management Interface: FusionCLI with direct access to Linux commands
Price: Vyatta developes a free “Community Edition”, a free VMWare Virtual Appliance, and two fee-based commercial products. Hardware appliances pre-installed with Vyatta are also available.
Key Features: Vyatta has support for both “horizontal” and “vertical” virtualization. With “horizontal” virtualization, networking functions such as VPN, router, and firewall can be duplicated on the same host. Role-based access control; remote access VPN; tunnel interfaces; PPPoE support; WAN load balancing; QoS; high availability - redundancy, availability, failover and fault tolerance. support for x86 systems with multiple redundant power supplies; sandboxed protocols.
Comments: The feature that sets Vyatta apart from other distros in its category is the so called “horizontal” virtualization, a boon to network managers and admins. Vyatta, the company that is behind the distro is deftly positioning itself as a real alternative to Cisco in much the same way that Juniper Networks started.
Zeroshell and XORP are the other Open Source routing platforms in active development, but with far less features than Vyatta Community Edition.
Download/Buy: The community edition and VMWare Virtual Appliance are available for free download. Commercial Vyatta products and commercial support may be purchased from the Vyatta Store.
Tutorials/Tips: Vyatta online demos and tutorials are available here
