Introduction

PfSense is an open source operating system used to turn a computer into a firewall, router, or a variety of other application-specific network appliances. PfSense is a customized FreeBSD distribution based on the m0n0wall project, a powerful but light-weight firewall distribution. PfSense builds upon m0n0wall's foundation and takes its functionality several steps further by adding a variety of other popular networking services.

This chapter covers the core settings needed for almost every pfSense deployment; whether that is a firewall, router, or even a wireless access point! Once pfSense is installed and configured according to the recipes in this chapter, you will have a fully-operation firewall plus router. At its most basic level, a pfSense machine can be used to replace the common home router when more functionality is desired. In more advanced configurations, pfSense can be used to establish a secure tunnel to a remote office, load-balance a web farm, or shape and prioritize all network traffic just to name a few example scenarios. There are literally hundreds of ways to configure and customize a pfSense installation.

Once pfSense is installed, there are two ways to access the system remotely—SSH and the WebGUI. An SSH connection will present you with the same low-level system menu that you would see on the screen if your machine is connected to a monitor. The SSH menu options are basic and very little configuration is done here. The entire configuration described in every recipe in this book is done through the WebGUI interface, unless specified otherwise, which is accessible through the IP address of any interface you configured during installation (such as 192.168.1.1).