pfSense is a free, open source customized distribution of FreeBSD tailored for use as a firewall and router. 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. pfSense is a popular project with more than 1 million downloads since its inception, and proven in countless installations ranging from small home networks protecting a PC and an Xbox to large corporations, universities and other organizations protecting thousands of network devices.

History of PFsense

The pfSense project started in 2004 as a fork of the m0n0wall project by Chris Buechler and Scott Ullrich, but focused towards full PC installations rather than the embedded hardware focus of m0n0wall. pfSense also offers an embedded image for Compact Flash based installations, however it is not our primary focus.

Features

Install, update, packages, management	Functionality and connectivity	Firewall and routing
Live CD, update, NanoBSD/embedded, virtual machine, and USB installers available Packaged support/push-button installer for extensions, including the Squid proxy server, the Snort intrusion prevention/detection system, ntop, the HAVP antivirus package,IP blocklists, and the FreeSWITCH[7] telephony platform Multi-language Console, web-based GUI, SSH (if enabled) and serial management RRD graphs reporting Traffic shaping and filtering Real-time information using Ajax	Virtual Private Networks using IPsec, L2TP, OpenVPN, or PPTP PPPoE server High availability clustering; redundancy and failover including CARP and pfsync Outbound and inbound load balancing Quality of Service (QoS) Dynamic DNS Captive portal uPnP Multi-WAN VLAN (802.1q) DHCP server and relay IPv6 support (in v2.1 beta) Multiple public IPs/multi-NAT RADIUS/LDAP Multiple resolvers (DNS forwarder, unbound, TinyDNS, other) Aliases supported for rules, IPs, ports, computers, and other entities	Stateful firewall Network Address Translation Filtering by source/destination IP, protocol, OS/network fingerprinting Flexible routing Per-rule configurable logging and per-rule limiters (IPs, 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 State table "up to several hundred thousand" states (1KB RAM per state approx) State table algorithms customizable including low latency and low-dropout

References

1. ^ Danen, Vincent (December 7, 2009). "DIY pfSense firewall system beats others for features, reliability, and security". TechRepublic. "If you want a high-availability and highly reliable firewall, pfSense is definitely something to seriously consider"
2. ^ ^a b Miller, Sloan (June 26, 2008). "Configure a professional firewall using pfSense". Free Software Magazine (22). "No experience is needed with FreeBSD or GNU/Linux to install and run pfSense"
3. ^ Buechler, Chris (June 21, 2007). "So what does pfSense stand for/mean, anyway?". pfSense Digest.
4. ^ "pfSense Open Source Firewall Distribution - History".
5. ^ Ullrich, Scott (October 13, 2006). "1.0-RELEASED!". pfSense Digest.
6. ^ Buechler, Chris (September 17, 2011). "2.0-RELEASED!". pfSense Digest.
7. ^ pfSense's FreeSWITCH
8. ^ "pfSense Firewall".
9. ^ "OPNsense - pfsense firewall appliances".
10. ^ "StrongBochs pfSense features".
11. ^ "pfSense firewall Kit".
12. ^ "pfSense embedded and UTM appliance firewall italian Kit".