The pfSense project is a powerful open source firewall and routing platform based on FreeBSD. pfSense software includes a web interface for the configuration of all included components.
In addition to being a powerful, flexible firewalling and routing platform, it includes a long list of related features and a package system allowing further expandability without adding bloat and potential security vulnerabilities to the base distribution.
The pfSense project started in 2004 as a fork of the m0n0wall project.
Firewall features include:
- Stateful firewall.
- Filtering by source and destination IP, IP protocol, source and destination port for TCP and UDP traffic.
- Network Address Translation.
- Filtering by source/destination IP address, protocol, OS/network fingerprinting.
- Highly flexible policy routing possible by selecting gateway on a per-rule basis (for load balancing, failover, multiple WAN, etc.)
- Aliases allow grouping and naming of IPs, networks and ports.
- Per-rule configurable logging and per-rule limiters (IP addresses, connections, states, new connections, state types), Layer 7 protocol inspection, policy filtering (or packet marking), TCP flag state filtering, scheduling, gateway.
- Packet scrubbing.
- Layer 2/bridging capable – can bridge interfaces and filter traffic between them, even allowing for an IP-less firewall.
- State table “up to several hundred thousand” states (1 KB RAM per state approx).
- State table algorithms customizable including low latency and low-dropout.
Website: www.pfsense.org
Support: Support, FAQ, GitHub Code Repository
Developer: Electric Sheep Fencing LLC
License: Apache License 2.0
pfSense is written in PHP. Learn PHP with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Firewalls | |
|---|---|
| IPFire | Distro with a versatile and state of the art firewall engine |
| OPNsense | FreeBSD-based firewall and routing software |
| pfSense | Powerful firewall and routing platform based on FreeBSD |
| OpenWrt | Linux distribution targeting embedded devices |
| NethSecurity | Linux firewall based on OpenWrt |
| DynFi | Firewall platform based on FreeBSD |
| VyOS | Router and firewall platform |
| Smoothwall Express | Firewall solution with a hardened Linux operating system |
| ClearOS | Dedicated firewall and Internet server/gateway |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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