Firewall, VPN, and router functionality for a fraction of the cost of proprietary alternatives.

Deploy today on a Netgate appliance, white box appliance, virtual machine or cloud provider instance.Get pfSense Now

Why pfSense?

Thousands of businesses, educational institutions, government agencies and non-profits – on all seven continents, and for years – have come to rely upon pfSense software for their secure networking needs. For organizations in search of sub-10 Gbps performance, flexible 3rd-party application options, traditional management mechanisms, proven reliability, and access to business assurance support options, pfSense software is the perfect answer.

And, where business assurance is required, Netgate provides professional and enterprise-class support arrangements that give you access to guidance and problem solving expertise from a seasoned and skilled support organization.

Secure Networking Challenges addressed by pfSense

pfSense software is routinely used to address Firewall, Routing and VPN server needs. The platform is also widely deployed to address secure networking needs including:

Load Balancing
Traffic Shaping
Captive Portal
UTM Device
DNS / DHCP Server
IDS / IPS
Transparent Caching Proxy
Web Content Filter

Looking for something more specific?

See our list of leading features and administrative capabilities below.

FEATURES

Firewall and Router

Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI)
GeoIP blocking
Anti-Spoofing
Time based rules
Connection limits
Dynamic DNS
Reverse proxy
Captive portal guest network
Supports concurrent IPv4 and IPv6
NAT mapping (inbound/outbound)
VLAN support (802.1q)
Configurable static routing
IPv6 network prefix translation
IPv6 router advertisements
Multiple IP addresses per interface
DHCP server
DNS forwarding
Wake-on-LAN
PPPoE Server

VPN

IPsec and OpenVPN
Site-to-site and remote access VPN support
SSL encryption
VPN client for multiple operating systems
L2TP/IPsec for mobile devices
Multi-WAN for failover
IPv6 support
Split tunneling
Multiple tunnels
VPN tunnel failover
NAT support
Automatic or custom routing
Local user authentication or RADIUS/LDAP

Intrusion Prevention System

Snort-based packet analyzer
Layer 7 application detection
Multiple rules sources and categories
Emerging threats database
IP blacklist database
Pre-set rule profiles
Per-interface configuration
Suppressing false positive alerts
Deep Packet Inspection (DPI)
Optional open-source packages for application blocking

Enterprise Reliability

Optional multi-node High Availability Clustering
Multi-WAN load balancing
Automatic connection failover
Bandwidth throttling
Traffic shaping wizard
Reserve or restrict bandwidth based on traffic priority
Fair sharing bandwidth
User data transfer quotas

User Authentication

Local user and group database
User and group-based privileges
Optional automatic account expiration
External RADIUS authentication
Automatic lockout after repeated attempts

Proxy and Content Filtering

HTTP and HTTPS proxy
Non Transparent or Transparent caching proxy
Domain/URL filtering
Anti-virus filtering
SafeSearch for search engines
HTTPS URL and content screening
Website access reporting
Domain Name blacklisting (DNSBL)
Usage reporting for daily, monthly, etc.

ADMINISTRATION

Configuration

Web-based configuration
Setup wizard for initial configuration
Remote web-based administration
Customizable dashboard
Easy configuration backup/restore
Configuration export/import
Encrypted automatic backup to Netgate server
Variable level administrative rights
Multi-language support
Simple updates
Forward-compatible configuration
Serial console for shell access and recovery options

System Security

Web interface security protection
CSRF protection
HTTP Referer enforcement
DNS Rebinding protection
HTTP Strict Transport Security
Frame protection
Optional key-based SSH access

Reporting & Monitoring

Dashboard with configurable widgets
Local logging
Remote logging
Local monitoring graphs
Real-time interface traffic graphs
SNMP monitoring
Notifications via web interface, SMTP, or Growl
Hardware monitoring
Networking diagnostic tools