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)

Choosing a form factor

This section describes how to choose the best hardware configuration based on our firewall requirements.

It's easiest to choose a form factor if we've already decided on the rest of our prerequisites:

  • Deployment scenario
  • Throughput requirements
  • Interface requirements
  • Image platform

Before choosing a form factor, we first need to evaluate the different types of form factors:

  • Small form: Energy-efficient, quiet (often silent), small footprint form factor.
  • Desktop: Standard desktop hardware. Easily upgradable and most people will have an older machine lying around that's perfectly suited for running pfSense.
  • Server: Larger or more complex environment may require server-class hardware.

Consider whether any of our requirements require special hardware. In our case, we need moderate throughput and aren't using any packages that require...