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 (13 chapters)

Updating pfSense

Odds are that, at some point, you are going to want to update pfSense, whther it's to take advantage of bug fixes, security patches, or new features. In this recipe, we will demonstrate how to update pfSense.

How to do it...

  1. Navigate to System | Update.
  2. Click on the Update Settings tab.
  3. In the Branch drop-down menu, select the correct branch (choices are Latest development snapshots and Latest stable version):

You can select the branch from either the System Update or the Update Settings tab.

  1. If you want to disable the dashboard auto-check, uncheck the Dashboard check checkbox.
  2. Click on the Save button when you are done making changes.
  3. Click on the System Update tab.
  4. Take note of the current base...