pfSense Open Source Firewall & Router

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pfSense helps make sense of Network Security and Routing. Best of all pfSense is Open Source which means less IT overhead while being adaptable to every enterprise networks needs.

 

There are many open source Firewall/Router Software's out there. Some are applications running on Windows, while others become community driven, power house Enterprise Network Security Packages. Well pfSense is no different. The capabilities of pfSense are vast & is only limited to what the human mind can produce from a network standpoint that is.

1. When loading the pfSense Live CD you will first come up on a Welcome Screen. You have several different mode options for booting the machine. At this point since we are only installing pfSense you will only want to hit the 'ENTER' Button.

2. After about a minute or two and a lot of text scrolling by you will get another menu that only stays briefly aprox. 10 Seconds so pay attention. At this screen you can either launch Recovery Mode by pressing the 'r' key, you can launch Installation Mode by pressing the 'i' key, or you can just keep letting the machine boot into the Live CD Mode. But here for the tutorial we will be hitting the 'i' key to launch the installer.

3. Next you will come up to a screen with Video Font, Screen Map, and Key Mapping configuration setting along with an Apply Settings. You should be perfectly fine unless you have some difficulty being able to view anything on the monitor and the keys you are pressing on the keyboard do what there intention is you should be fine. Highlight Apply Settings & Hit Enter.

4. Here we come to a screen asking us to choose a task to run. The tasks on the list are Quick/Easy Install, Custom Install, Rescue Config.xml, Reboot and Exit. For most people choosing Quick/Easy Install will suffice. Only choose Custom Install if you know and understand partitioning, how to select the packages you want to be installed for the services you want or if you want to actually learn more and you are just doing it for an educational purpose. It's very easy to mess things up. Rescue config.xml may be needed in the future. Since I have used pfSense I have not known a machine that has needed a recovery unless the administrator himself caused the problem. Reboot and Exit are obvious so for here we are going to choose Highlight Quick/Easy Install & hit 'Enter' key, then hit the 'Enter' key again at the next window to allow the installation to start.

This Tutorial is Not complete yet will be completed tomorrow once I wake up....