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

Creating a captive portal with RADIUS authentication


This recipe describes how to create a captive portal that will use a RADIUS server for authentication. RADIUS, which stands for Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service, is a network protocol that provides centralized Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting (AAA) management. It is implemented on a number of different platforms, including UNIX and Microsoft Windows servers. It is also often used by internet service providers (ISP) to provide access to the internet and email services. RADIUS operates on port 1812 and is an application-layer protocol. Although it was initially developed by a private company (Livingston Enterprises, Inc.), it now exists as an IETF standard. Authentication and authorization are described in RFC 2865, while accounting is described in RFC 2866.

 

 

Getting ready

Creating a captive portal that uses RADIUS is not that difficult. You can either use an external RADIUS server installed on a separate computer,...