PfSense is well-known for providing numerous features that happen to be only otherwise out there on high-priced commercial firewalls. Moreover, with the release of pfSense 2.0 in 2011, quite a few new options have already been added for the software. Listed below are 5 capabilities that offer compelling reasons to deploy pfSense in your network. Get extra details about Pfsense Router
[1] Load balancing: Using numerous elements with load balancing, a method for distributing workloads across numerous computers or other resources, may possibly increase reliability. It really is commonly only important inside large or sensitive systems (as an example, well known web sites, huge IRC networks, high-bandwidth FTP sites, NNTP and DNS servers), and not all firewall and router products help load balancing. pfSense, on the other hand, supports it, and may be configured to load-balance or failover redundant WAN interfaces. Load-balancing will divide all traffic among the interfaces whilst failover will use a single interface, but upon failover it's going to automatically switch to one more. This brings us towards the next function:
[2] Failover: PfSense may be configured to switch to a redundant or standby laptop or computer server, system, hardware component or network upon the failure or abnormal termination from the previously active application, server, system, hardware element or network. By way of example, you might configure pfSense to automatically redirect traffic from the primary webserver to a backup webserver in the even of a failure. You'll be able to even configure multiple pfSense systems for failover, so if one pfSense laptop or computer goes down, the firewall nonetheless functions.
[3] Customizable guidelines: All firewalls have rules, but pfSense, in particular with version 2.0, has created guidelines hugely customizable. For instance, a rule can be set up to only accept traffic from a certain OS (Windows. MacOS and Linux are supported, needless to say, too as a number of UNIXoid variants and Novell). Also, there is a scheduling option, so guidelines will only invoked during specific hours and days, and quite a few other options.
[4] MAC address spoofing: The majority of the time, an ISP registers the client's MAC address for service and billing services. This can be circumvented simply by MAC spoofing, and it's trivially uncomplicated in pfSense, exactly where MAC spoofing is as easy as typing within a diverse MAC address for a network interface. This can be handy if you want to force the ISP's DHCP server to lease you a brand new IP address, or for other factors.
[5] VPN: Most firewalls and routers support virtual private networks (VPNs), but couple of have the flexibility of pfSense. As an example, m0n0wall supports VPNs, and has quite a few in the options you would anticipate to find out for VPNs (e.g. help for various encryption and hash algorithms and distinct authentication solutions), but m0n0wall only supports the IPSec and PPTP protocols. PfSense, on the other hand, supports IPSec and PPTP also as OpenVPN and L2TP protocols, and has quite a few sophisticated options, for example NAT traversal (permitting customers to connect from behind restrictive firewalls) and dual peer detection.
This list of functions isn't, by any means an exhaustive one, but these are a few of the reasons why pfSense is extra flexible and potent than competing firewall/router products.