Book Image

pfSense 2.x Cookbook - Second Edition

By : David Zientara
Book Image

pfSense 2.x Cookbook - Second Edition

By: David Zientara

Overview of this book

pfSense is an open source distribution of the FreeBSD-based firewall that provides a platform for ?exible and powerful routing and firewalling. The versatility of pfSense presents us with a wide array of configuration options, which makes determining requirements a little more difficult and a lot more important compared to other offerings. pfSense 2.x Cookbook – Second Edition starts by providing you with an understanding of how to complete the basic steps needed to render a pfSense firewall operational. It starts by showing you how to set up different forms of NAT entries and firewall rules and use aliases and scheduling in firewall rules. Moving on, you will learn how to implement a captive portal set up in different ways (no authentication, user manager authentication, and RADIUS authentication), as well as NTP and SNMP configuration. You will then learn how to set up a VPN tunnel with pfSense. The book then focuses on setting up traffic shaping with pfSense, using either the built-in traffic shaping wizard, custom ?oating rules, or Snort. Toward the end, you will set up multiple WAN interfaces, load balancing and failover groups, and a CARP failover group. You will also learn how to bridge interfaces, add static routing entries, and use dynamic routing protocols via third-party packages.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
About Packt
Contributors
Preface
Index

Applying basic settings to General Setup


This recipe describes how to configure core pfSense settings from the web GUI.

Getting ready

All that is required for this recipe is a fresh install of pfSense and access to the web GUI.

Note

On a new install, the default login credentials are Username: admin and Password: pfsense

How to do it...

  1. In the web GUI, navigate toSystem | General Setup.
  2. In the first section of the page (System), enter a Hostname. This name can be used to access the firewall instead of the IP address:
  1. In the next field, enter the Domain:

  1. The next field is DNS Servers. By default, pfSense will act as the primary DNS server; however, you can specify alternate DNS servers here. The Add DNS Server button causes an additional edit box to appear, into which you can enter another DNS server; you can add as many alternate DNS servers as is necessary:

  1. Check the Allow DNSserver list to be overridden by DHCP/PPP on WAN checkbox (it should be checked by default). This ensures that any DNS requests that cannot be processed internally will be passed on to the external DNS servers, asspecified by your ISP:

  1. In the Localization section, specify a Timezone and leave Timeservers at the default value of 0.pfsense.pool.ntp.org. Specify the appropriate Language (the default is English):

  1. In the webConfigurator section, I’d recommend the default Theme of pfSense. You can set Top Navigation to either Scrolls with page (appropriate for all screen sizes) or Fixed (designed for large screens only). You may also set the number of Dashboard Columns (the default is 2):

  1. When done, click on the Save button.

See also

  • The Configuring the DNS Forwarder recipe in Chapter 2, Essential Services.