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

Using pfTop


pfTop is available in both the web GUI (via Diagnostics | pfTop) and from the console/SSH (where pfTop is 9 on the console menu). pfTop is extremely useful because it provides a live view of the state table, as well as the total amount of bandwidth utilized by each state.

 

pfTop contains several column headings; here, we will enumerate each of the default headings. PR stands for protocol; D stands for direction (this can be in or out); SRC stands for source; and DEST stands for destination. AGE is how long since the entry was generated. EXP is when the entry expires; PKTS is the number of packets that have been handled by the rule; and BYTES is the number of bytes handled by the rule.

The STATE column provides a little less clarity. This column indicates the state of both sides of the connection, using the format client:server. The states will not fit into an 80-column computer display, so pfTop uses integers (for example, 1:0). This is what the numbers in the following table signify...