Untangle is a privately held company based in Sunnyvale, California

Sunnyvale, California

Sunnyvale is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. It is one of the major cities that make up the Silicon Valley located in the San Francisco Bay Area...

. The company provides an open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 network gateway for small businesses, schools, and non-profit organizations. Untangle provides multiple gateway applications installed at the edge of a network

Computer network

A computer network, often simply referred to as a network, is a collection of hardware components and computers interconnected by communication channels that allow sharing of resources and information....

.

History

Untangle was founded in 2003 as Metavize, Inc. by John Irwin and Dirk Morris. In 2006, Metavize raised a $10.5M series-A venture funding round from CMEA Ventures and Rustic Canyon Partners, named Bob Walters as CEO, and renamed to Untangle, Inc. In 2007, Untangle released the Untangle Gateway Platform as open source under the GPLv2 license.

In October 2009, Untangle released Untangle 7.0 which included improvements to its reporting capabilities. In December 2009, Untangle released Untangle 7.1 which included improvements to its web filtering and policy management applications. In March 2010, Untangle released Untangle 7.2 which included its Captive Portal

Captive portal

The captive portal technique forces an HTTP client on a network to see a special web page before using the Internet normally. A captive portal turns a Web browser into an authentication device. This is done by intercepting all packets, regardless of address or port, until the user opens a browser...

 application.

Untangle released a free bookmark utility called SaveFace

SaveFace

SaveFace is a bookmarklet utility that, when invoked, automatically changes Facebook users' privacy settings to Friends Only. It is a free utility, developed by Untangle, Inc....

 in May 2010, in response to continued loosening of default privacy settings in Facebook user accounts. In June 2010 Untangle released Untangle 7.3, enabling the company's software to be used by OEM

OEM

OEM means the original manufacturer of a component for a product, which may be resold by another company.OEM may also refer to:-Computing:* OEM font, or OEM-US, the original character set of the IBM PC, circa 1981...

 hardware manufacturers to produce their own branded multi-function firewalls and UTM

UTM

UTM is a three-letter abbreviation with multiple meanings, as described below* Ultrasonic Thickness Measurement, using propagation of ultrasound waves to determine the thickness of metals...

 appliances. In August 2010 Untangle released Untangle 7.4, wherein it simplified its packages to Lite, Standard and Premium.

In November 2010 Untangle released Untangle 8.0, which included Bandwidth Control. In February 2011 Untangle released Untangle 8.1, which included Web Cache.

Awards and recognition

In August 2008, Untangle was named a winner in InfoWorld

InfoWorld

InfoWorld is an information technology online media and events business operating under the umbrella of InfoWorld Media Group, a division of IDG...

’s Best of Open Source Software awards.

Products

Untangle provides software in three different packages: Lite, Standard and Premium.

Untangle offers its Lite Package for free, whilst selling its Standard Package or Premium Package on subscription. Each comprises a collection of Untangle network software applications.

Untangle applications include anti-spam, content filtering

Content filtering

Content filtering is the technique whereby content is blocked or allowed based on analysis of its content, rather than its source or other criteria. It is most widely used on the internet to filter email and web access.- Content filtering of email :...

, antivirus, anti-phishing, anti-spyware, intrusion prevention, firewall

Firewall (computing)

A firewall is a device or set of devices designed to permit or deny network transmissions based upon a set of rules and is frequently used to protect networks from unauthorized access while permitting legitimate communications to pass....

, OpenVPN

OpenVPN

OpenVPN is a free and open source software application that implements virtual private network techniques for creating secure point-to-point or site-to-site connections in routed or bridged configurations and remote access facilities. It uses a custom security protocol that utilizes SSL/TLS for...

, router, and web cache

Web cache

A web cache is a mechanism for the temporary storage of web documents, such as HTML pages and images, to reduce bandwidth usage, server load, and perceived lag...

software on the Untangle Gateway Platform.

The company also offers a range of hardware, or appliances, with Untangle Gateway Platform pre-installed.