pfSense 2.5 released: free network firewall distribution
The pfSense project is a free network firewall distribution, based on the FreeBSD operating system with a custom kernel and including third-party free software packages for additional functionality. pfSense software, with the help of the package system, is able to provide the same functionality or more of common commercial firewalls, without any of the artificial limitations. It has successfully replaced every big-name commercial firewall you can imagine in numerous installations around the world, including Check Point, Cisco PIX, Cisco ASA, Juniper, Sonicwall, Netgear, Watchguard, Astaro, and more.
pfSense software includes a web interface for the configuration of all included components. There is no need for any UNIX knowledge, no need to use the command line for anything, and no need to ever manually edit any rule sets. Users familiar with commercial firewalls catch on to the web interface quickly, though there can be a learning curve for users not familiar with commercial-grade firewalls.
pfSense started in 2004 as a fork of the m0n0wall Project (which ended 2015/02/15), though has diverged significantly since.
By Gonzopancho (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons
Operating System / Architecture changes
Security / Errata
- Deprecated the built-in relayd Load Balancer #9386
relayddoes not function with OpenSSL 1.1.x- The
relaydFreeBSD port has been changed to require libressl – There is no apparent sign of work to make it compatible with OpenSSL 1.1.x- The HAProxy package may be used in its place; It is a much more robust and more feature-complete load balancer and reverse proxy
- For more information on implementing HAProxy, see HAProxy package and the Hangout
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