Preface

Welcome to The pfSense Documentation, written by the pfSense® project team and including contributions from community members.

This set of documents covers topics ranging from the installation process and basic configuration to advanced networking and firewalling using this popular open source firewall and router software distribution.

This is designed to be a friendly guide to common networking and security tasks along with a thorough reference for the capabilities of pfSense software. These documents cover the following topics (and more!):

  • An introduction to pfSense software and its features.

  • Firewall design and hardware planning.

  • Installing and upgrading pfSense software.

  • Using the web-based configuration interface.

  • Backing up and restoring the firewall configuration.

  • Firewalling fundamentals including defining and troubleshooting rules.

  • Port forwarding and Network Address Translation (NAT).

  • General networking and routing configuration.

  • Virtual LANs (VLANs), Multi-WAN, and Bridging.

  • Virtual Private Networks using IPsec and OpenVPN.

  • Traffic shaping using ALTQ or Limiters.

  • Wireless networking configuration.

  • Captive Portal setup.

  • High Availability using redundant firewalls.

  • Various network-related services.

  • Firewall monitoring, logging, traffic analysis, sniffing, packet capturing, and troubleshooting.

  • Software package and third-party software installations.

There is also a Menu Guide with all standard menu choices available in the pfSense software GUI.