Mastering pfSense - Second Edition

Revisiting pfSense Basics

While high-speed internet connectivity is becoming more and more common, many in the online world—especially those with residential connections or small office/home office (SOHO) setups—lack the hardware to fully take advantage of these speeds. Fiber-optic technology brings with it the promise of a gigabit speed or greater, and the technology surrounding traditional copper networks is also yielding improvements. Yet many people are using consumer-grade routers that offer, at best, mediocre performance.

pfSense, an open source router/firewall solution, is a far better alternative that is available to you. You have likely already downloaded, installed, and configured pfSense, possibly in a residential or SOHO environment. ...