The company I work for has a small office of about 15 users. For security, the original IT people setup a standard 4 port linksys router between the dsl modem and a switch. That router acted as the network's primary perimeter defense. Today I replaced the linksys router with an old server running the latest version of IPCop.

Now I know the linksys router is only a cheap $40 piece of hardware you can get from best buy, but the network had never been compromised (at least not to our knowledge) while the linksys was being used.

I'm a fan of the saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", but the linksys log files were just far too limited for what I was looking for to monitor network traffic. Also IPCop's proxy module was a nice bonus.

So, finally on to my question, this IPCop machine should at LEAST be as secure as the linksys router right? Besides the detailed logs and proxy functionality, will I get any added security from the IPCop gateway?

I haven't enabled the snort intrusion detection yet, but that should come very shortly.

Most linksys routers actually run Linux, so you're likely comparing Linux vs Linux. As far as I'm aware ipcop comes fairly locked down out of the box without extraneous services or added software which is a critical thing for dedicated routers/firewalls. Plus you'll gain additional features, including *much* more extensive logging and finer grained control over firewalling (most linksys firmware is kind of clunky) as well as IDS capability which is not availble with linksys.