Express is the current version of the SmoothWall Open Source GPL firewall from which SmoothWall started.

Express is released by the SmoothWall Open Source project, which is separate from the SmoothWall company. The project consists of a worldwide group of community volunteers, financially supported by SmoothWall. Many members of SmoothWall staff also act as volunteers outside of working hours.

There is no charge for SmoothWall Express and all the program code is Open Source, ie those with the technical ability are welcome and encouraged to modify, change or improve it for their own benefit and for that of others. This is the ethos of Open Source. The SmoothWall company benefits greatly from the availability of Open Source software, indeed all SmoothWall products are built on the foundation of Open Source software such as the Linux kernel, the Apache web server and Squid proxy server. Express also acts as a test bed for future technologies that will appear in commercial SmoothWall products, such as the use of the Linux 2.6 kernel.

The very first SmoothWall GPL firewall was released via SourceForge in the summer of 2000. New versions followed rapidly until the release of the landmark 0.9.9 in the fall (autumn) of 2001. Version 1.0 was frankly little different to 0.9.9 but when it came to update to version 2.0, the name was changed from SmoothWall GPL to SmoothWall Express. It was also decided that Express should be aimed at anybody wanting to protect their computers, regardless of whether they had any knowledge of Linux or not. Thus Express had to be made easy to use and understand, accompanied by much better documentation than is typical of most Open Source projects. Realistically Express could not achieve this goal whilst providing every technical feature the Linux and Open Source community might desire.

Most Express users are home users, often people with a day job in the IT industry who want something better to protect their home network than the plastic box router/firewall from the local computer store. SmoothWall Express is the world's most popular perimeter firewall, ie protecting a network of computers at its perimeter with the Internet, as opposed to a personal firewall running on an individual computer. Every month there are over 50,000 installations, more than 600,000 per year.

SmoothWall contributes a lot of documentation, program code and development effort to Express. Security updates for Express are developed by SmoothWall staff during company working hours in order that they are released promptly when needed, rather than having to rely upon the availability of community volunteers. Unlike our commercial products, SmoothWall does not provide technical support for Express - you cannot phone or email our Technical Support Team with a question or problem. However, there are excellent and very active forums on the smoothwall.org site where you can get support from SmoothWall volunteers. There is also a development forum and additional resources for those interested in enhancing Express.

For more information or to download the latest version; Express 3.0 please visit smoothwall.org.