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

Enabling Wake-on-LAN


pfSense can send a wake-on packet (also known as a magic packet) to compatible computers to wake the device out of sleep or standby mode. This can sometimes be useful in performing network diagnostics. This recipe describes how to send a wake-on packet using pfSense.

How to do it...

  1. Navigate to Services | Wake-on-LAN.
  1. In the Interface drop-down menu, select the pfSense interface to which the host to be woken up is connected. For example, if the node we need to wake is on the LAN network, select LAN.
  2. In the MAC address text field, enter the MAC address of the network interface on the node to be woken.
  3. Click on the Send button.

How it works...

The Wake-on-LAN feature involves sending magic packets to properly-configured devices that support Wake-on-LAN. When such a device receives such a packet, it will wake the device out of its sleep or standby mode.

 

Note

Note that, on older hardware, properly configuring a network interface card (NIC) can involve attaching a special Wake-on...