TutoLivre

pfsense [1] is a project of firewall based on FreeBSD that is more than a million downloads. Born in 2004 as a fork of the m0n0wall project [2] focusing on the use pf packet filter, based on an earlier version of FreeBSD and installable on PC platform and not only in embedded systems.

With an image of just 60MB you burn a livecd and has all the options and settings via a web interface. The pfsense supports the vast majority of services needed for any firewall and / or network gateway, some examples are DHCP, DNS, firewall, traffic shaper, VPN, NAT, Proxy, Captive Portal, balancing of links and many other features [3] . The pfsense has the ability to receive packages and new features everything installed by the browser. The entire configuration is stored in a single file in XML format. The graphic display of the network traffic logs and files from the system are also displayed on the web, all pre-configured and very friendly.

Really worth much to meet you and use it. I discovered this treasure seeking a specialized Linux distribution. I did tests with the basic ipcop [4] and smoothwall [5], but when I met the pfsense not believed that there might be a distro with a level of expertise so big and with so many features compared to other distros segment. As I was planning to start using Linux on my network and could not time for studies and tests, was the same thing as "join the hunger with the desire to eat."

Soon want to share some tips and experiences with pfsense.

[1] - http://www.pfsense.com/
[2] - http://m0n0.ch/wall/
[3] - Features pfsense
[4] - http://www.ipcop.org/
[5] - http://www.smoothwall.org/