As the internet approaches its fiftieth anniversary, networked computers have essentially become the norm across much of the world. Computer networks are commonplace, even within the home, and it is not uncommon for households to have multiple internet-connected devices—a trend that undoubtedly will only accelerate with the growing popularity of the internet of things (IoT). With networks becoming part of our basic infrastructure, reliable networking equipment has become as essential as telephone exchanges and railways were to prior generations.
Even if you only have a home network, at a minimum, you will need a router to connect your private network with the public internet and a firewall to provide both ingress filtering (filtering for incoming traffic) and possibly egress filtering (for outgoing traffic). pfSense can perform both functions. In this chapter, we will introduce the pfSense project, explain how pfSense can help secure your network, and introduce you to the pfSense community, from which you can find out more about pfSense, and, hopefully, get answers to questions. Finally, we will briefly discuss the objectives of this book.
Reading this chapter should provide the reader with an understanding of the following:
- The pfSense project
- What pfSense can do
- The pfSense community
- The objectives of this book
