Open source technologies that help build and manage network infrastructure

Open source technologies have moved much beyond just Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. Today, you can call anyone across the world using open-source based technologies, you can monitor the performance of your network using open source technologies and you can also check for network intrusions using open source technologies. Most of them have a free version with sufficient functionalities to be deployed over the enterprise networks.

Here is a small list of popular open-source downloadable (mostly free) technologies that help build/monitor enterprise/institutional networks:

Asterisk: Asterisk is a down-loadable VOIP Soft-switch. In other words, it is the IP PBX telephony software that can control all the phones in your company. You can connect IP Phones, analog phones, soft phones analog trunk lines (FXO, PRI etc), SIP trunks (Some of them may need hardware adaptors) and create a complete VOIP telephony infrastructure in your company. What’s more, there is no user based licensing and the number of concurrent calls it can handle is restricted only because of the hardware limitations. There are even predictive dialler’s based on asterisk that are available for setting up a call centre!

Zimbra/Mozilla Thunderbird/Evolution: Zimbra, interestingly offers a complete alternative to Microsoft Exchange when it comes to setting up an enterprise mail server. What more, you can use Zimbra’s own desktop client or more popular open source packages like Mozilla Thunderbird or Evolution instead of Outlook.

Linux: Linux, has been quite popular as the preferred operating system for enterprise servers. But the desktops were always on Windows/Mac. No other option? You would be surprised at how much functionalities are packed into some Linux based operating systems like Ubuntu (for example) that all you need to do is to install them (even as a parallel OS to Windows) and it comes inbuilt with most of the drivers required for immediate hassle free operation (Even my Samsung printer driver was in-built in Ubuntu!). With regular updates sent your way, its fast, secure, comfortable and best of all – free!

Openoffice: If you have not tried this, try it immediately. This is a perfect alternative to Microsoft Office. You can even save and read files in Microsoft Office formats. But I would love to see the day when .odt becomes the default format instead of .doc and files are sent across in that format. I have always wondered why people don’t use Openoffice! There is no reason not to!

OpenNMS/ Nagios: There are many open-source based softwares that monitor the performance of your network. I have named just two of them, and there are many more there on the world wide net. Some of them even offer GUI based network monitoring systems totally free of cost and with open source, you can integrate just about any program that allows you to do so – You have the source code!

OpenLDAP: Many companies already use LDAP directories to store the information about all their employees, their log-in credentials etc. OpenLDAP is the open-source based program that allows you to create such directoties whose elements may be dispersed around the world! Many network equipments (like Wi-Fi Controllers etc) can integrate and refer to such LDAP directories, which ensures that you don’t need to create seperate directories for each service you use on the network.

FreeRadius: A radius server is a AAA server which does Authentication, Authorization and Accounting functionalities. When you need to deploy an Radius Server for authentication, try FreeRadius. What more, they can fetch information/user-credentials from programs like the LDAP directories.

SpamAssasin: Email Spam is a pain area for most of the companies that use their own emal servers. Spam-assasin offers a specialist open-source based freely downloadable Anti-Spam alternative to most of the commercial programs available out there.

Xibo: Xibo is an open-source multi-display, multi-zone, fully scheduled digital signage solution controlled from a centrally managed web interface. Ofcourse, it is free to download!

GIMP: GNU Image Manipulation Program is an interesting alternative to Photoshop. If you don’t have Photoshop, and want a free open-source program like that, why not try GIMP? It’s supported by a huge community and has a lot of features that make it a professional software package.

Snort: This is the Open-source based Network Intrusion Detection system. There is even an Open source based UTM (Unified Threat Management) program called Untangle that offers many of the security functionalities required for enterprise networks as a single package (Combining various open-source network security technologies).

We are not saying that the above technologies are a breeze to install and maintain, but once you attempt to do all that you can learn much more than just installing an off-the-shelf commercially available products. Open-source alternatives are not always ‘Free’ when you consider the time and efforts required to implement them (in some cases), so you might as well consider hiring a professional to implement open-source network technologies. But the best bet is to implement and learn them all yourselves, even if that process takes more time.

And yeah, the spirit of open-source software is to contribute back to the community. That means, using opensource software is just the first step!

This is not an exhaustive list, and hence I will keep updating them. But if you know some open-source technologies that helps in building/maintaining enterprise networks, please do suggest the same in the comments section.

excITingIP.com

In case you have any questions, you can contact us using the contact form or leave a comment below. You can also subscribe with your email address (on the right side of this site) to get notified (title and summary) when a new article is published on this site.