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476 lines
20 KiB
XML
476 lines
20 KiB
XML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
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<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.4//EN"
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"http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.4/docbookx.dtd">
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<article>
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<!--$Id: template.xml 3517 2006-02-22 22:54:59Z judas_iscariote $-->
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<articleinfo>
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<title>The Shorewall Environment Survey 2006</title>
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<authorgroup>
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<author>
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<firstname>Paul</firstname>
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<surname>Gear</surname>
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</author>
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</authorgroup>
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<pubdate><?dbtimestamp format="Y/m/d"?></pubdate>
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<copyright>
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<year>2006</year>
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<holder>Paul D. Gear</holder>
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</copyright>
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<legalnotice>
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<para>Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this
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document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version
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1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with
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no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover, and with no Back-Cover
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Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled
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<quote><ulink url="GnuCopyright.htm">GNU Free Documentation
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License</ulink></quote>.</para>
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</legalnotice>
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</articleinfo>
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<section id="Background">
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<title>Background</title>
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<para>In early March 2006, i embarked on the journey of surveying
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Shorewall users. Initially this sprang from my own curiosity: i thought
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that some of the systems at work on which i use Shorewall may be bigger
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and more complex than most others, and i wanted to find out if there are
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people out there who use Shorewall like i do. As started thinking about
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the questions i would ask, i realised that if i asked the right questions,
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i could create a survey that might help the Shorewall project better to
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understand its users.</para>
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<para>I used <ulink url="http://www.zoomerang.com">Zoomerang</ulink> to
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create the survey. It has a number of tools that make it easy to create
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useful surveys. To get the most benefit out of Zoomerang, you have to
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subscribe to their professional version.</para>
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<para>In the long term, it would be great to have a practical free
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software alternative that could be self-hosted. A number of free content
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management systems such as <ulink url="http://drupal.org">Drupal</ulink>
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have a survey module, but when i last looked at them, they were more
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limited and harder to use than Zoomerang.</para>
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<section id="Survey">
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<title>Survey and results links</title>
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<para>The survey is still open as of this writing, and can be accessed
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at <ulink url="http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?p=WEB2253NNBCN44">the
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Zoomerang survey page</ulink>. Further participation is encouraged. The
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figures quoted in this document reflect the results at the time of
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writing.</para>
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<para>The <ulink
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url="http://www.zoomerang.com/reports/public_report.zgi?ID=L22KHC6BPGLS">public
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results</ulink> of the survey are available. If you complete the survey,
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a link to the results is provided on the thank you page.</para>
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</section>
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<section id="Sample">
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<title>Sample size</title>
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<para>An important note about this survey is that it has a small sample
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size (103 complete responses at the time of writing), so any conclusions
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drawn should be considered tentative.</para>
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<para>To speculate on the overall number of users that this sample
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represents, the <ulink
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url="http://popcon.debian.org/source/by_inst.gz">Debian popularity
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contest</ulink> reports 478 installations of Shorewall, 285 of which are
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in active use. Assuming that the popularity contest represents 30% of
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the Debian installed base (likely ridiculously optimistic), this would
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make the number of active Shorewall systems approximately:</para>
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<para>285 / 0.3 (percentage of Debian systems) / 0.26 (percentage Debian
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holds of all distributions) = 3654 (rounding up the numbers to the
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nearest whole, and assuming the percentages extrapolate
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regularly)</para>
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<para>This means that our survey represents a maximum of 2.8% of the
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installed base, likely far less.</para>
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</section>
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<section id="Factors">
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<title>Other possible inaccuracies</title>
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<para>Additionally, since the survey was open to multiple responses, it
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could be that some people answered the questions about themselves more
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than once, despite instructions to the contrary in the introduction
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page.</para>
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<para>There is an error in the released version of the survey for
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question 15 (RAM size): it was a multiple choice question rather than
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single choice, and thus there were more results than expected. The
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number of errors doesn't seem to be significant.</para>
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<para>If you notice any errors in this analysis, or have any suggestions
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about how to improve it, please contact the author at <ulink
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url="mailto:pgear@shorewall.net">pgear@shorewall.net</ulink>.</para>
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</section>
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</section>
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<section id="Results">
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<title>Results analysis</title>
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<section id="Org">
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<title>Organisations</title>
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<para>Small organisations dominate the spectrum of Shorewall users. The
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largest group (44%) was 1-10 users - mostly SOHO LANs based on the
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comments in that section. Ninety percent (90%) of Shorewall
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installations are in organisations with less than 500 users. The results
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for the questions about organisational size and the number of users
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serviced by Shorewall match fairly closely, which seems to indicate that
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the majority of Shorewall systems are servicing the entire organisation
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in question.</para>
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<para>The vast majority (84%) of Shorewall systems are administered by
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only one person. One question that needs to be asked is, "Why?" Possible
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reasons for this might be:</para>
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<itemizedlist>
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<listitem>
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<para>Most of the organisations in which it is used are small, thus
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most of them will only have one person skilled in the area of packet
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filtering firewalls. This seems a likely scenario, but a cross
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correlation of the results of questions 1 and 2 with question 3
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indicates that the number of administrators is fairly uniform across
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all sizes of organisation and user base.</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>Shorewall works so well that people don't have to touch it
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much. Obviously, this is the preferred interpretation of the
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Shorewall project team. :-)</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>Shorewall is too hard for new users to comprehend, so one
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skilled person in an organisation tends to get the job maintaining
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it. Equally obviously, this is a non-preferred interpretation. :-)
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However, being a firewall generator, Shorewall is not likely to
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attract the same sort of users as a web browser or music
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player.</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>Shorewall administrators are a closed bunch and don't like
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sharing their job around. Given the nature of firewalls and packet
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filtering, this doesn't seem far-fetched.</para>
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</listitem>
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</itemizedlist>
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<para>There doesn't seem to be an easy answer to thus question. In
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retrospect, since there were no responses indicating 10 or more
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administrators, i could have made the granularity of this question
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better. A question about a person's role in the organisation may also
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have been helpful. Possibly we could follow up with a smaller survey,
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specifically about the people and organisations who use
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Shorewall.</para>
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</section>
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<section id="Users">
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<title>Users</title>
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<para>Unsurprisingly, 97% of survey respondents were male. Or to put it
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another way: surprisingly, there are actually 3 female Shorewall users.
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:-) Being male seems to be an occupational hazard of life in the IT
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industry, and even more so in the more "nerdy" specialisations like
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Linux and security.</para>
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<para>The largest age group of users is 25-34 years (42% of all
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respondents). There were no retirees (65 and over) or minors (under 18)
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in the responses. The distribution of the remaining age groups was
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fairly even.</para>
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<para>The largest group of users in terms of education was those with a
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Bachelor's degree, followed by those with a high school education.
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Fifty-seven percent (57%) of Shorewall users have a Bachelor's degree or
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better. Many users' highest qualifications are not in an IT-related
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discipline (42%). This remains fairly constant across the spectrum when
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correlated with the highest level of qualifications. Those who do not
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claim IT as their highest discipline come from a wide variety of other
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fields, including agriculture, art, business, chemistry, education,
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various forms of engineering, law, mathematics, physics, and
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theology.</para>
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<para>Almost two-thirds of users (62%) use Shorewall as part of their
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paid employment. Of these, 12% (7 of 58) do not use Shorewall as part of
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their official duties. Cross correlation with level of education
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revealed no major variance in this trend depending on level of
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education.</para>
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<para>The majority of users (73%) began using the Internet in the 1990s.
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A smaller majority (61%) have been using the Internet for more than 12
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years (1994 or earlier). (The single response indicating use of the
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Internet (then ARPANET) since the 1960s seems to be an error.)</para>
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<para>The majority of users (70%) began using Linux after it reached a
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certain stage of maturity - around or after the release of kernel 2.0
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(1996). However, nearly all respondents (97%) have been using Linux for
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5 years or more, with almost half (47%) having 10 or more years
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experience with it. It seems fair to say that as a rule, Shorewall
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attracts people with plenty of experience.</para>
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<para>Around one third of users (30%) have been using Shorewall for more
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than 5 years, with two-thirds (66%) having used it since the 1.x series
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(2003 or earlier). It seems fair to say that Shorewall users seem to
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stick with the product once they are familiar with it. On the other
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hand, it seems that Shorewall is not attracting large numbers of new
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users, which is a concern for the future of the project.</para>
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</section>
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<section id="Hardware">
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<title>Hardware</title>
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<para>Ninety-three percent (93%) of users run Shorewall on i386 family
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hardware, with a further 6% running it on x86-64/EM64T platforms. One
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response was received indicating use of Shorewall on MIPS (Linksys WRT
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platform). No responses were received for any other hardware platform.
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While it is not surprising that Intel would be dominant, given their
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market share, it seems a little skewed not to have any representatives
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of other architectures.</para>
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<para>A good spread of CPU power is shown in the survey responses. The
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largest group was 400-999 MHz (30%), with only 16% of responses
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indicating less than 400 MHz, and the same number greater than 2500 MHz.
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A number of responses in the field for additional information suggested
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that the machines used were either recycled desktops, or systems that
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were specifically built to do the job, and had been running in that role
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for a number of years.</para>
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<para>RAM configuration seemed to mostly mirror CPU power, with a slight
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bias towards higher RAM figures. The majority (52%) of systems have
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between 256 and 1023 MB; only 11% of systems have less than 128 MB; 28%
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have 1024 MB or more. This reflects the more server-oriented workload
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that many Shorewall systems run (see the section on server roles
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below).</para>
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<para>Shorewall systems on the whole tend toward smaller OS hard disks,
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with 42% having disks 39 GB or smaller. The largest group by a small
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margin was 80-159 GB at 23%, with 10-39 GB and 0-9 GB coming in a close
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second and third at 22% and 20% respectively.</para>
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</section>
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<section id="Network">
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<title>Network</title>
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<para>The majority of Shorewall systems (82%) use between two and four
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network interfaces. The number of devices connected to systems closely
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mirrors the size of the organisations in which they are used, with 95%
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of systems connecting less than 500 devices, and the largest group (41%)
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connecting 2-10 other devices.</para>
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<para>Ninety percent (90%) of Shorewall systems are connected to 100
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Mbps or faster local networks. Most systems have a broadband Internet
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connection or better, with only 7% having 512 Kbps or less, and 51%
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having 10 Mbps or better. DSL is the most common form of Internet
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connection, with over half the responses (51%).</para>
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</section>
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<section id="Software">
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<title>Software</title>
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<para>The most popular Linux distribution on which users run Shorewall
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is Debian (26% of respondents), followed by a group consisting of Fedora
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Core (16%), Red Hat 9 and earlier (13%) and Red Hat Enterprise and
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derivatives (12%). The next group consists of SUSE (9%), Slackware (8%),
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Gentoo (6%), and LEAF/Bering (5%).</para>
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<para>The message about maintaining an up-to-date Shorewall system seems
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to have gotten through, with 61% of respondents running the latest
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stable version (3.0), and an additional 22% running the previous stable
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version (2.4). Only 14% of users are running unsupported older versions
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(2.2 and previous).</para>
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<para>The most common roles played by Shorewall systems are:</para>
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<itemizedlist>
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<listitem>
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<para>External firewall/router (78%)</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>DNS name server (61%)</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>DHCP server (59%)</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>Internal firewall/router (56%)</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>Time server (55%)</para>
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</listitem>
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</itemizedlist>
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</section>
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<section id="Comments">
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<title>Comments from users</title>
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<para>Following is a sample of the comments we received about the survey
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- they have been carefully sanitised to make us look good. ;-)</para>
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<itemizedlist>
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<listitem>
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<para>More power to Shorewall!</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>Shorewall Rocks! I'm amazed how easy it is every time I need
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to do something, even if it's been 6+ months since the last change!
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:)</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>Good job and a great product.</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>Shorewall is good, I have recommended it to several people,
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mostly working in the University & academic areas.</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>Thanks to everyone who contributes to Shorewall. That's a
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*great* piece of software!</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>Shorewall has been incredible. Tom has given so much of
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himself to this project, I can only say thank you from one person, I
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look up to people like him. I have used Shorewall for many systems,
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I am a contractor that "set up shop" all over the world. Depending
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on the available ISP services, this project has been flexible in
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every situation to date. Also, depending on my needs, it has done
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the same. "IP Tables made easy" is really an accurate
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description.</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>I'm quite interested in seeing what the 'cross section' of
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Shorewall users are like. It's made my life a lot easier over the
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years. Thank you.</para>
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</listitem>
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</itemizedlist>
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</section>
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</section>
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<section id="Lessons">
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<title>Lessons learned about survey technique</title>
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<section id="Approach1">
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<title>Treat surveys like releasing free software</title>
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<itemizedlist>
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<listitem>
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<para>test on a small group before you go public</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>release early and often</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>make branches (copies) when you release alpha and beta
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versions</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>merge the changes from branches (lessons you learned in those
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versions) into the main trunk</para>
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</listitem>
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</itemizedlist>
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</section>
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<section id="Approach2">
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<title>Start small and work towards what you want to know with specific,
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concrete questions</title>
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<para>I tried to do everything in one survey, and ended up confusing
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some people. For example, despite the fact that the survey's start page
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clearly says "Please answer the questions for only ONE SYSTEM running
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Shorewall", i received multiple comments saying that they couldn't
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answer accurately because they ran more than one Shorewall
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system.</para>
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<para>It would have been better to have two surveys: one about the
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people who use Shorewall, and another about the systems they run it on.
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Better still would be for Shorewall to automatically collect appropriate
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information about systems and request permission to send it to a central
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location for statistical analysis. How to do this and maintain users'
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privacy and obtain their permission efficiently is not an easy problem
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with a product like Shorewall, which doesn't actually stay running on
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user systems, and doesn't present a user interface per se.</para>
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</section>
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<section id="Approach3">
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<title>Be prepared beforehand</title>
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<para>Within hours of the survey's release, 50% of the results were in.
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Within 3 days, it hit the Zoomerang basic survey limit of 100 responses.
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I had not planned for such an enthusiastic response, and also was too
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busy to download all of the results before the survey's time limit
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expired. Fortunately, i was able to obtain funding to allow a Zoomerang
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"pro" subscription to be purchased and thus provide advanced analysis,
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and complete downloads of the results.</para>
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</section>
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<section id="Approach4">
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<title>Incrementally improve your surveys</title>
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<para>The final version of this survey was released still with a few
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bugs. The released version was just a copy of my master survey, and i
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continued to maintain the master after the final survey was released
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(and during this analysis), and i'm sure the next version will be even
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better.</para>
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</section>
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</section>
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<section id="Implications1">
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<title>Possible implications for the Shorewall project</title>
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<para>The users we have seem, on the whole, rather experienced, and very
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loyal. However, we don't seem to be attracting new users, despite new
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features such as multi-ISP support and integrated traffic shaping. The
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question about a GUI comes up frequently, and one wonders whether this is
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would make a significant difference in Shorewall's uptake with new
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users.</para>
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<para>Shorewall seems to be predominantly used in small, i386-based
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environments such as home LANs and small businesses. It seems to be
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frequently combined with a number of other basic functions, such as DNS,
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DHCP, NTP, VPN. Integration with (or perhaps providing a plug-in module
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for) a dedicated gateway distribution such as ipcop, Smoothwall, or Clark
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Connect might be a good way to serve the needs of our users.</para>
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</section>
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<section id="Implications2">
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<title>Possible implications for other free software projects</title>
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<itemizedlist>
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<listitem>
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<para>The essence of free software is software by the people, for the
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people. Knowing who the people are and what their needs are is
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critical to this process.</para>
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</listitem>
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<listitem>
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<para>If at all possible, build statistics gathering into your
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application, and find a way to encourage people to use it. This
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concrete data will help confirm the results of any surveys you might
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conduct.</para>
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</listitem>
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</itemizedlist>
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</section>
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</article>
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