pfSense Digest

Scott and I are on FLOSS 101 discussing the project, check it out. Thanks much to Randal Schwartz and Leo Laporte for having us! FLOSS Weekly is a podcast covering free and open source software.

Protect your network with pfSense firewall/router

To address the current status on a couple of the limitations noted – the IPsec and OpenVPN limitations mentioned are already resolved in 1.3, which puts it right on par with enterprise class solutions for those needing the mentioned lacking capabilities in 1.2.x.

Wide Open Mind episode 9, Building a router with pfSense, contains a nicely done very basic overview of pfSense that offers a good introduction for the typical home user.

Not sure why he didn’t acknowledge the alert prior to recording.    That’s the first time I’ve seen that message pop up on anything other than the Intel NICs in Nokia IP110/120/130 boxes. That feature generates a random MAC address from unassigned vendor space for NICs whose MAC address show to the OS as FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF. This is very rare, and occurs on atypical hardware that doesn’t store its MAC address in the “usual” location for whatever reason. The alert is basically a “hey, this is weird, but I fixed it” notification.

Nicely done video though.

Wired has a howto article on pfSense on their site.

Build a Wireless Gateway to the Internet. Share your internet connection with your neighbors. Split the cost

Very well written article from InfoWorld on “Open source on the wire“, which mentions pfSense. Good read for those considering an open source firewall or router solution.

When all is said and done, there’s little argument against using open-source routing and firewalling tools in most any network, as long as your admins are comfortable with the technology. We know that open-source routing and firewalling solutions can meet or exceed the performance and stability of their commercial counterparts; the proof has been in the proverbial pudding for many years now. Maybe it’s time to hand over yet another part of the infrastructure to the open-source rebels. After all, in for a penny, or in for a pound. It’s good to have that choice.

Sloan Miller, who has done some good work on doc.pfsense.org, has written an article on pfSense for Free Software Magazine.

Configure a professional firewall using pfSense

The first issue of BSD Magazine is now available, and pfSense 1.2 is mentioned on the cover and the 1.2 release is on the included DVD. No written content on pfSense is included that I’m aware of, though I’m not sure as my issue has not yet arrived. I may be writing an article for a future issue if I can find the time.

Scott and I, as well as our partner Centipede Networks’ CEO Jeff Starkweather, were interviewed in Free Software Magazine regarding our commercial support venture.

Free Software Magazine is “the free online magazine about free software. It is free to subscribe and free to read online.” This is the first I had heard of it, but they have a lot of good content. I recommend checking it out and subscribing. You also may be interested in the free software news site FSDaily.

Tony Mobily, editor of the magazine, did a great job with the interview. He asked a lot of the same questions we’ve received from many of you, and I think it does a nice job of clarifying our offerings and the partnership.

The August 2007 issue of USENIX ;login: magazine is available, which includes a BSDCan summary article with a summary of two sessions written by yours truly (including the pfSense session).

The slides for our presentation have also been available on the BSDCan website for quite some time now, I forgot to mention it here.