OpenBSD 4.2 Release
One of the best assets in the toolbox when it comes to network security is OpenBSD. I currently use this in production to provide packet filtering and routing. This OS has been around for more than 10 years, and is incredibly secure just from a default install. Plus, it performs incredibly on modest hardware setups.Version 4.2 has been released, and I’ll be upgrading all active servers to take advantage of the new features. Here are a couple notable ones:
Native Serial-ATA support:
ahci(4) driver for SATA controllers conforming to the Advanced Host Controller Interface specification.
Huge performance improvements in the network stack, including:
In pf, store routing table ID, queue ID etc directly in the packet header mbuf instead of using mbuf tags (which use malloc'd memory). This yields a 100% improvement in pf performance.