E-box A unified network server for SMEs

AND OTHER FUNCTIONS AS Basic Definition

(firewall, antivirus, office and small networks)

EBox Platform is a unified network server open source (or a unified network platform) for SMEs. eBox can act to manage the network infrastructure, such as Internet Gateway (Gateway), managing security threats (UTM) and office server, and unified communications server or a combination thereof. Moreover, eBox includes a development framework (a framework) to facilitate the development of new services based on Unix.

The project's source code is available under the terms of the GNU General Public License, as well as under several proprietary licenses. The Spanish company eBox Technologies SL is the owner and sponsor of eBox Platform and owns the copyright of the source code.

E-Box Platform began as a collaborative project between two companies and was published as an open source project for the first time in 2005. On November 16, 2006 eBox was officially approved as a project NEOTEC, receiving public funds from the CDTI (Spanish public organization under the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism) to complete the development of version 1.0. eBox was included for the first time on Ubuntu in 2007, the Gutsy Gibbon Tribe 3, the third alpha release of Ubuntu 7.10. The first release candidate, eBox 1.0, was published in 2008.

Features Overview

E-Box Platform 1.2 (released in August 2009) has the following features


  • Network management
  • Firewall and routing
  • Traffic filtering
  • NAT and port redirection
  • Support for multiple gateways, load balancing and self-adaptation to the loss of connectivity
  • Traffic shaping (supporting application level filtering)
  • Traffic monitoring
  • Network Configuration
  • DHCP server
  • NTP Server
  • Dynamic DNS of the main suppliers
  • Support for virtual private networks
  • Domain Name Server
  • HTTP Proxy
  • Cache
  • User Authentication
  • Content filtering
  • Support for lists categorized as: urlblacklist or shallalist
  • Antivirus
  • Mail Server
  • Virtual domains
  • POP3 and IMAP with SSL / TLS
  • Spam and Antivirus Filtering
  • White lists, black and gray
  • Custom Filtering
  • POP3 clear filter
  • Web Server
  • Virtual domains
  • Certification Authority
  • IDS Module
  • Group work
  • Centralized management of users and groups
  • Support Windows PDC
  • Resource sharing
  • File server
  • Antivirus
  • Audit log
  • Print server
  • Groupware: Sharing calendars, diaries, webmail, wiki, etc..
  • VoIP Module: Creating users with extensions and voice mailboxes. Can make and receive calls.You can create conference rooms.
  • Instant Messaging
  • Conferences
  • Reporting and monitoring
  • Monitoring Module: disk, memory, load, temperature and CPU of the machine
  • Dashboard to be centralized service information
  • Software RAID status and usage information hard
  • Full report and summary of systems
  • Event notification via mail, news subscription (RSS) and XMPP
  • Software Updates
  • Backups (full or configuration)


Development


EBox Platform uses a model of free software, with all the source code available to its users.



Design


eBox is a web application server using the Apache webserver with mod perl as stratum and Mason components as building blocks, mainly written in Perlorientado object, with some visual enhancements Javascript. 


Its design incorporates modern programming techniques such as


Design Patterns: Observer design pattern used primarily to integrate different eBox modules. For example, each service provides information on what ports need to be open. Moreover, singleton pattern is used to store configuration and overall performance. 

Decoupling of logic and presentation: the user interface using CSS and AJAX, and includes several components Mason, as a generic table used to configure services. The program logic resides in the packages of the libraries and code CGI. 

Fault Tolerance: errors and warnings are handled through software exceptions, ranging from the core to the handler routine. 


It also provides the architecture for troubleshooting, integrating the distribution of the execution stack of the Perl 5 interpreter. 


Each process is monitored by each service if it dies, it is automatically relaunched. 


Open Source

Components eBox is built on common components and free software stable


  • Apache
  • Web Server
  • mod_perl
  • CGI engine
  • OpenLDAP
  • Shared users and groups
  • OpenSSL
  • Cryptography
  • Netfilter / iptables
  • Firewalls
  • Network Address Translation
  • BIND
  • Domain Name Server
  • Squid
  • Web proxy cache
  • DansGuardian
  • Content Filtering
  • Postfix
  • Email Server
  • Jabber
  • Instant Messaging
  • Ntpd
  • Date and Time Synchronization
  • OpenVPN
  • Virtual Private Networks
  • Samba
  • Shared Storage
  • Shared authentication for Windows clients
  • System Common Unix Printing (CUPS)
  • Shared Printers
  • Advanced Packaging Tool (APT)
  • Installing and upgrading software
  • Asterisk
  • Voice over IP
  • Snort
  • Intrusion Prevention System based on network
  • eGroupware
  • Sharing calendar, contacts, webmail
  • Dovecot
  • IMAP and POP3 server
  • The full distribution using Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron.

Community


The main community is on the eBox Support Forum eBox.


The inclusion of eBox on Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon was preceded by some comments on the Ubuntu Forums community. 


There is also a very active group of users who have managed to carry Linkstation eBox to a PowerPC. 


User Documentation


Installation Guide has instructions for various installation methods such as CD eBox and Ubuntu packages, and get the source code and run eBox from scratch. 


Official documentation for eBox 1.2 (available in English and Spanish) aimed at users of eBox Platform, introduces the concepts and terminology, explaining the different services and use cases. 


Additional Documents: Full list of available documentation, including how-tos, FAQs, screencasts and other documents. 


API reference: description and parameters of classes and methods.

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