Netgate pfSense Plus Firewall/VPN/Router
Netgate | 24.11.0Linux/Unix, FreeBSD 14 - 64-bit Amazon Machine Image (AMI)
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Greatest, Most Reliable, Open Source Network Tool
What do you like best about the product?
pfSense, and its packages are incredibly reliable. It's quick backup/restore of the config file (for package data also) is incredibly useful and helpful. The BSD base also allows for great integration and customization. I work in the IT industry and have never come across a better piece of software.
What do you dislike about the product?
There's honestly nothing bad about this software, maybe the occasional bug, but all software have them.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It offers feature-rich enterprise-level solutions for home and lab setups. It allows me to utilize, and tinker, with features I wouldn't normally have access to in a straightforward and simple-enough manner that doesn't require hours of config time.
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Stable, secure, simple
What do you like best about the product?
pfSense is a product I've been using for literally years to secure my home internet connection and, more recently that of my small business. It boasts an amazing community where most issues will already have an answer on the various forums. During COVID lockdowns, the simplicity of setting up VPN connectivity allowed everyone to continue working remotely with next to no issues.
What do you dislike about the product?
Since the push toward a more commercially focused product, the regularity of the updates has diminished; however - it's a firewall, and stability SHOULD be celebrated.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Provides a simple interface through which to provision new VPN connections (and users) along with making it intuitive to create DHCP leases for fixed network assets and allowing specific traffic to transit various VLANs
Involved process, but worth the experience.
What do you like best about the product?
The level of control I have over my firewall. I can isolate all of the network traffic as needed with minimal issues in the process. I like that I could potentially extend pfSense, given that I have a backgroun d in php.
What do you dislike about the product?
The lack of some templated functionality for setting up monitoring and not restricting someone from potentially installing plugins out-of-sync with the version.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Isolating network traffic where certain devices have a tendency to "phone home" with telemetry being gathered on my network(s). I can now explicitly stop behavior and have more insight into what's going on.
A very powerfull free Linux-based Firewall with all the needed features
What do you like best about the product?
Well, first, the very intuitive front end. Also Youtube is full of videos showing how to configure almost all available features and different scenarios. Available documentation, foruns for troubleshooting some of the more common issues, and on top of that you may chose to pay for support (recommended in case of professional use). Another strong point here is that you may go for a hardware based firewall, or install PFsense on a computer with 2 ethernet adapters, and it doesn't require much resources.
What do you dislike about the product?
To be honest, so far I haven't found anything that I dislike.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
In my case, I use it only on my home lab. I have a Virtualization Server where I test software and Windows based domain configurations, etc. I have a VM with PFsense isolating that Virtual infrastructure from my home infrastructure, filtering traffic (since I also use the lab for sandboxing some software), creating several NAT for remote administration, blocking ports, redirecting ports, etc. I can explore all the settings and learn a lot about firewall use cases and configurations.
"PfSense is my first choice of solution to implement"
What do you like best about the product?
It is an easy solution to implement and almost never presents problems, almost never, and that is very good, as an accessible solution that is practically free.
What do you dislike about the product?
He has a difficulty with the basic NAT configuration for publishing web pages, although it is simple, it necessarily requires a unique public IP for each subdomain when it is a system separate from the main domain, although an alternative is with ports... and he does not have a bandwidth meter like speedtest.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Solve problems of distributing internet service among users (guests, employees, bosses, and system administrators) with very good bandwidth control, IP ranges, and DHCP; publication through NAT for web pages in a simple way; and real-time monitoring of bandwidth usage is possible.
PFsense a versatil, powerfull, and easy router.
What do you like best about the product?
One of the most essential characteristics of PFsense is that it can run on x86 archutecture machines without losing their lightness, enabling the deployment on virtualizalized enviroment and the usage of bare metal servers. Also, the GUI is very intuitive and the concepts are easy to learn.
What do you dislike about the product?
Sometimes handy packages lost maintainers, and this becomes a very disappointing situation. Also, I have to suffer 2 packages that manage configuration wrong. So maybe more control on the repos may improve the quality of the packages.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
PFsense fall in a perfect position for the IT department that does not have skills on the managing of router appliances like cisco, huawei and others, Allowing to take advantage of the IT experience to WAN networking on enterprise and even Homes.
Super reliable, super simple, super capable. Really just super.
What do you like best about the product?
Easy to configure. Updates do not break features or reliability. Easy to create limited-access users. Certificate management is very easy. Tons of functionality.
What do you dislike about the product?
No API. High availability setup after a unit is already set up and running for a while is not smooth. Certificate management could use a bulk action interface.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
The rich feature set and easy setup makes it ideal for QA labs. The reliability and speed make it great for production. Having one affordable product that can do both means much easier management.
Simply amazing, is the best open source and community driven firewall
What do you like best about the product?
To be able to use OpenVPN with other VPN providers without restrictions or constraints.
What do you dislike about the product?
If I had to point a thing, I would say that it needs more Packages.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It replaced completely a fortinet appliance! And has the benefits of cost reduction for my company!
Amazing routing and security even for noobs
What do you like best about the product?
I am not an IT professional and my needs were mostly about making my home network secure, but also ensuring that my business access was not impacted as a work from home professional.
What do you dislike about the product?
It took a bit of time to get up to speed as this is significantly more technical than a router setup. However, that said, documentation, wiki and forum support were amazing.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
-isolating my guest network
-vlans for my kids controlling web access and time of use
-blocking ads and explicit sites
-more administrator control
-network logging
-vlans for my kids controlling web access and time of use
-blocking ads and explicit sites
-more administrator control
-network logging
A great firewall with a thriving community and good documentation
What do you like best about the product?
+ Good plugin base
+ Good free documentation
+ Free and quality forum support
+ Broad community
+ Stable software
Advantage to competition is customizability in my opinion, you have many features to choose from and on top of that, you can test out beta features which puts pfSense ahead of its competition.
One example is DCO.
+ Good free documentation
+ Free and quality forum support
+ Broad community
+ Stable software
Advantage to competition is customizability in my opinion, you have many features to choose from and on top of that, you can test out beta features which puts pfSense ahead of its competition.
One example is DCO.
What do you dislike about the product?
The entrance/skill level is rather high, many features are there but need to be explored. I, for one, had difficulty understanding the switch module of my specific device.
To clarify: There is another section called "switches" where additional switch modules are displayed. Getting the right config for it to work, especially with different VLANs, is very tricky. I made the mistake to fiddle with Port VID 4090 and 4091 and essentially locked myself out, good thing there was a documentation for that.
To clarify: There is another section called "switches" where additional switch modules are displayed. Getting the right config for it to work, especially with different VLANs, is very tricky. I made the mistake to fiddle with Port VID 4090 and 4091 and essentially locked myself out, good thing there was a documentation for that.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
We use pfSense for our whole neighbourhood (4 companies connected), VPN connections, our Active Directory Federation Services but needed the overall higher throughput. We switched from UniFi dream machine to two XG-7100s in failover and our overall network responsiveness as well as VPN thoughput. We also needed a more refined firewall ruling for our ADFS and DNS resolving/redirecting on different VLANs, which the pfSense fulfilled flawlessly.
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