We took the final barrier for you, now you just have to plug it in and power it up…
Ever since the introduction of open source, there has been one common challenge that binds them all..
the lack of turn-key open source appliances,so if you like the software you will have to build your own server, firewall, phone system or whatever open source appliance you require.
In the end that is where the real cost is as you need to find out where to buy quality hardware, test and install the software on it…
And then? Well most of the time things aren’t going as planned.
So when we introduced our first appliances we had two things in mind:
+ make open source software easy to use,
+ and make it affordable.
With our OPN line appliances we added another dimension to this philosophy
and for the first time open source can finally win the battle from the commercial competitors.
Take a look for yourself and be amazed!
pfSense
pfSense is a free, open source customized distribution of FreeBSD tailored for use as a firewall and router. In addition to being a powerful, flexible firewalling and routing platform, it includes a long list of related features and a package system allowing further expandability without adding bloat and potential security vulnerabilities to the base distribution. Being based on the fabulous m0n0wall foundation pfSense provides almost all of m0nowalls' features and several important features on top of that.
Versions
Currently all OPNsense appliances can be delivered with either pfSense 2.0.1 Release or pfSense 1.2.3 Release.
According to the pfSense development team 2.0 is the preferred version for new installations.
Features
pfSense includes most of the features available in expensive commercial firewalls, and more in many cases. The following is a list of features available in the pfSense 1.2.3 release. All of these things are possible in the web interface, without touching anything at the command line.
* Stateful inspection firewall more...>
+ Filtering by source and destination IP, IP protocol, source and destination port for TCP and UDP traffic
+ Able to limit simultaneous connections on a per-rule basis
+ pfSense utilizes p0f, an advanced passive OS/network fingerprinting utility to allow you to filter by the Operating System
initiating the connection.Want to allow FreeBSD and Linux machines to the Internet, but block Windows machines?
pfSense can do so (amongst many other possibilities) by passively detecting the Operating System in use.
+ Option to log or not log traffic matching each rule.
+ Highly flexible policy routing possible by selecting gateway on a per-rule basis (for load balancing, failover, multiple WAN)
+ Aliases allow grouping and naming of IPs, networks and ports.
This helps keep your firewall ruleset clean and easy to understand, in environments with multiple public IPs
and numerous servers.
+ Transparent layer 2 firewalling capable - can bridge interfaces and filter traffic between them,
even allowing for an IP-less firewall (though you probably want an IP for management purposes).
+ Packet normalization, so there are no ambiguities in interpretation by the ultimate destination of the packet.The scrub
directive also reassembles fragmented packets, protecting some operating systems from some forms of attack, and drops
TCP packets that have invalid flag combinations.
o Enabled in pfSense by default
o Can disable if necessary. This option causes problems for some NFS implementations, but is safe and should be left
enabled on most installations.
+ Disable filter - you can turn off the firewall filter entirely if you wish to turn pfSense into a pure router.
* Granular control over state table more...>
The firewall's state table maintains information on your open network connections. pfSense is a stateful firewall, by default all rules are stateful. Most firewalls lack the ability to finely control your state table. pfSense has numerous features allowing granular control of your state table, thanks to the abilities of OpenBSD's pf.
+ Adjustable state table size - there are multiple production pfSense installations using several hundred thousand states.
The default state table size is 10,000, but it can be increased on the fly to your desired size.
Each state takes approximately 1 KB of RAM, so keep in mind memory usage when sizing your state table.
Do not set it arbitrarily high.
+ On a per-rule basis:
o Limit simultaneous client connections
o Limit states per host
o Limit new connections per second
o Define state timeout
o Define state type
+ State types - pfSense offers multiple options for state handling.
o Keep state - Works with all protocols. Default for all rules.
o Modulate state - Works only with TCP. pfSense will generate strong Initial Sequence Numbers (ISNs) on behalf of the host.
o Synproxy state - Proxies incoming TCP connections to help protect servers from spoofed TCP SYN floods.
This option includes the functionality of keep state and modulate state combined.
o None - Do not keep any state entries for this traffic. This is very rarely desirable, but is available because it can be useful under some limited circumstances.
+ State table optimization options - pf offers four options for state table optimization.
o Normal - the default algorithm o High latency - Useful for high latency links, such as satellite connections. Expires idle connections later than normal.
o Aggressive - Expires idle connections more quickly. More efficient use of hardware resources, but can drop legitimate connections.
o Conservative - Tries to avoid dropping legitimate connections at the expense of increased memory usage and CPU utilization.
* Traffic Shaper more...>
Traffic shaping (also known as "packet shaping") is the control of computer network traffic in order to optimize or guarantee performance, lower latency, and/or increase usable bandwidth by delaying packets that meet certain criteria. More specifically, traffic shaping is any action on a set of packets (often called a stream or a flow) which imposes additional delay on those packets such that they conform to some predetermined constraint (a contract or traffic profile).
Limitations
The 1.2.x traffic shaper will not work for more than one WAN and one LAN interface.
Please look at version 2.0 for that functionality.
For more information on pfSense trafficshaping capabilities (including version 2.0, Layer 7) see
PFSenseDocs.
* Captive portal more...>
Captive Portal Captive portal allows you to force authentication, or redirection to a click through page for network access. This is commonly used on hot spot networks, but is also widely used in corporate networks for an additional layer of security on wireless or Internet access. For more information on captive portal technology in general, see the Wikipedia article on the topic. The following is a list of features in the pfSense Captive Portal.
+ Maximum concurrent connections - Limit the number of connections to the portal itself per client IP.
This feature prevents a denial of service from client PCs sending network traffic repeatedly without authenticating
or clicking through the splash page.
+ Idle timeout - Disconnect clients who are idle for more than the defined number of minutes.
+ Hard timeout - Force a disconnect of all clients after the defined number of minutes.
+ Logon pop up window - Option to pop up a window with a log off button.
+ URL Redirection
after authenticating or clicking through the captive portal, users can be forcefully redirected to the defined URL.
+ MAC filtering - by default, pfSense filters using MAC addresses.
If you have a subnet behind a router on a captive portal enabled interface,
every machine behind the router will be authorized after one user is authorized.
MAC filtering can be disabled for these scenarios.
+ Authentication options - There are three authentication options available.
o No authentication - This means the user just clicks through your portal page without entering credentials.
o Local user manager - A local user database can be configured and used for authentication.
o RADIUS authentication - This is the preferred authentication method for corporate environments and ISPs. It can be used to authenticate from Microsoft Active Directory and numerous other RADIUS servers.
+ RADIUS capabilities o Forced re-authentication
o Able to send Accounting updates
o RADIUS MAC authentication allows captive portal to authenticate to a RADIUS server using the client's MAC address as the user name and password.
o Allows configuration of redundant RADIUS servers.
+ HTTP or HTTPS - The portal page can be configured to use either HTTP or HTTPS.
+ Pass-through MAC and IP addresses - MAC and IP addresses can be white listed to bypass the portal.
Any machines with NAT port forwards will need to be bypassed so the reply traffic does not hit the portal.
You may wish to exclude some machines for other reasons.
+ File Manager - This allows you to upload images for use in your portal pages.
Limitations:
+ Can only run on one interface simultaneously in 1.2.3, unlimited interfaces in 2.0.
+ "Reverse" portal, i.e. capturing traffic originating from the Internet and entering your network, is not possible.
+ Only entire IP and MAC addresses can be excluded from the portal, not individual protocols and ports
* 802.1Q VLAN support more...>
VLANs are virtual LAN segments of a managed switch, and when pfSense is plugged into a trunk port it can utilize VLANs to have multiple virtual interfaces, one for each available VLAN. In this manner, you can have pfSense talk to a large number of networks without the need for more physical interfaces.
More information about VLAN's in pfSense is available in the
PFSenseDocs.
* VPN more...>
IPsec
IPsec allows connectivity with any device supporting standard IPsec.
This is most commonly used for site to site connectivity to other pfSense installations,
other open source firewalls (m0n0wall, etc.), and most all commercial firewall solutions (Cisco, Juniper, etc.).
It can also be used for mobile client connectivity.
Limitations
* NAT-T is not supported until version 2.0, which means mobile clients behind NAT are not supported.
This limits pfSense's usefulness with mobile IPsec clients. OpenVPN or PPTP is a better solution.
* Some of the more advanced capabilities of
ipsec-tools are not supported until 2.0, including DPD, XAuth, NAT-T, and others.
OpenVPN
OpenVPN is a flexible, powerful SSL VPN solution supporting a wide range of client operating systems.
See the
OpenVPN website for details on its abilities.
PPTP
PPTP is a popular VPN option because nearly every OS has a built in PPTP client, including every Windows release since Windows 95 OSR2.
See
this Wikipedia article for more information on the PPTP protocol.
The pfSense PPTP Server can use a local user database, or a RADIUS server for authentication.
RADIUS accounting is also supported. Firewall rules on the PPTP interface control traffic initiated by PPTP clients.
Limitations
* Because of limitations in pf NAT, when the PPTP Server is enabled, PPTP clients cannot use the same public IP
for outbound PPTP connections. This means if you have only one public IP, and use the PPTP Server, PPTP clients inside your network will not work.The work around is to use a second public IP with Advanced Outbound NAT for your internal clients. See also the PPTP limitation under NAT on this page.
* DNS: DynDNS, RFC 2136 more...>
Dynamic DNS
A Dynamic DNS client is included to allow you to register your public IP with a number of dynamic DNS service providers.
* DynDNS
* DHS
* DyNS
* easyDNS
* No-IP
* ODS.org
* ZoneEdit
A client is also available for RFC 2136 dynamic DNS updates, for use with DNS servers like BIND which support this means of updating.
Limitations
* Only works on primary WAN interface - multi-WAN support is available in 2.0.
* Can only update one account with a single provider. 2.0 enables the use of unlimited accounts.
* Only works when pfSense has the public IP assigned to one of its interfaces.
If you have a modem that obtains your public IP and gives pfSense a private IP,
the private IP will be registered with the provider.
In 2.0, there is an option to determine your actual public IP and correctly register it.
* Redundancy, CARP, failover more...>
CARP from OpenBSD allows for hardware failover.
Two or more firewalls can be configured as a failover group. If one interface fails on the primary or the primary goes offline entirely, the secondary becomes active.
pfSense also includes configuration synchronization capabilities, so you make your configuration changes on the primary and they automatically synchronize to the secondary firewall.
pfsync ensures the firewall's state table is replicated to all failover configured firewalls. This means your existing connections will be maintained in the case of failure, which is important to prevent network disruptions.
Limitations
Only works with static public IPs, does not work with stateful failover using DHCP, PPPoE, or PPTP type WANs
Load Balancing Outbound
Load Balancing Outbound load balancing is used with multiple WAN connections to provide load balancing and failover capabilities. Traffic is directed to the desired gateway or load balancing pool on a per-firewall rule basis.
Inbound Load Balancing
Inbound load balancing is used to distribute load between multiple servers. This is commonly used with web servers, mail servers, and others. Servers that fail to respond to ping requests or TCP port connections are removed from the pool.
* And much more...>
DHCP Server and Relay
pfSense includes both DHCP Server and Relay functionality
Reporting and Monitoring
RRD Graphs
The RRD graphs in pfSense maintain historical information on the following:
* CPU utilization
* Total throughput
* Firewall states
* Individual throughput for all interfaces
* Packets per second rates for all interfaces
* WAN interface gateway(s) ping response times
* Traffic shaper queues on systems with traffic shaping enabled
Real Time Information
Historical information is important, but sometimes it's more important to see real time information.
SVG graphs are available that show real time throughput for each interface.
For traffic shaper users, the Status -> Queues screen provides a real time display of queue usage using AJAX updated gauges.
The front page includes AJAX gauges for display of real time CPU, memory, swap and disk usage, and state table size.
Packages
pfSense is also equiped with a package manager that gives you access to many additional features, such as:
* VOIP, through the Freeswitch package
* Intrusion detection with the Snort package
* High Availability package
* Internet Proxy, uses the Squid package
* and many more...
Note: Some packages require a hard drive to work properly,
however most packages can be installed on a Flash Based version as well (use a flash card >= 1Gb)
For more information about pfSense and it's features go to www.pfsense.org
New in pfSense 2.0
Version 2.0 of pfSense holds many new features and supports Layer 7 protocol filtering
For a comprehensive list of changes and new features in pfSense 2.0 see the '2.0 New Features and Changes'
Screenshot(s)
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