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    PfSense or other Firewall for growing company with 10Gbps internet connection?

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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    • S
      SteveITS Galactic Empire @shaw222
      last edited by

      @shaw222 If you compare specs to say the 1541 that will give you a starting point.
      https://shop.netgate.com/collections/rack-appliances

      OpenVPN uses a single core. Don’t expect 10 Gbps speed. Note the 1541 shows IPSec “IMIX Traffic: 1.77 Gbps.” How active are the 125 connections?

      10gbps fiber or copper?

      TNSR doesn’t have IDS or OpenVPN but has IPSec.

      Pre-2.7.2/23.09: Only install packages for your version, or risk breaking it. Select your branch in System/Update/Update Settings.
      When upgrading, allow 10-15 minutes to restart, or more depending on packages and device speed.
      Upvote 👍 helpful posts!

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      • H
        heper @shaw222
        last edited by heper

        @shaw222 said in PfSense or other Firewall for growing company with 10Gbps internet connection?:

        I intend to buy pfsense plus and pay for the netgate support if I chose to deploy the pfsense solution.

        Maybe you should contact support to help you with picking the hardware as well

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        • S
          shaw222 @SteveITS
          last edited by

          @steveits said in PfSense or other Firewall for growing company with 10Gbps internet connection?:

          https://shop.netgate.com/collections/rack-appliances

          Thanks Steve. If TNSR doesn't support OpenVPN, how do I get the VPN connections?
          Also, how can I implement an IDS/IPS solution with this?

          I will send you the typical bandwidth usage by VPN clients by end of business today.

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          • S
            shaw222
            last edited by

            @heper I will, thanks

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            • S
              SteveITS Galactic Empire @shaw222
              last edited by

              @shaw222 “throw hardware at it” seems overly simplistic but the requirements are really high for pfSense. Can you somehow offload the VPN to an internal server or second router instead of the primary router? Switch to IPSec?

              @stephenw10 may have suggestions.

              Pre-2.7.2/23.09: Only install packages for your version, or risk breaking it. Select your branch in System/Update/Update Settings.
              When upgrading, allow 10-15 minutes to restart, or more depending on packages and device speed.
              Upvote 👍 helpful posts!

              S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • stephenw10S
                stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                last edited by

                Yeah to get a real 10Gbps throughput in pfSense requires serious hardware and if you need to Snort/Suricata and ntopng at those rates then you're looking at close to the fastest you can get.

                Off loading the OpenVPN connection is certainly something I would consider for a connection that size. It would at least make it a lot more flexible.

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                • S
                  shaw222 @SteveITS
                  last edited by

                  @steveits said in PfSense or other Firewall for growing company with 10Gbps internet connection?:

                  Can you somehow offload the VPN to an internal server or second router instead of the primary router? Switch to IPSec?

                  Hi Steve - I haven't done this. Can you guide me on to a link on how to do it. So if I am to guess, the primary firewall will allow the vpn traffic and direct it to a secondary firewall which will do the authentication and management (thereby freeing the overhead from the primary firewall? )

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                  • S
                    shaw222 @stephenw10
                    last edited by

                    @stephenw10 said in PfSense or other Firewall for growing company with 10Gbps internet connection?:

                    Yeah to get a real 10Gbps throughput in pfSense requires serious hardware and if you need to Snort/Suricata and ntopng at those rates then you're looking at close to the fastest you can get.
                    Off loading the OpenVPN connection is certainly something I would consider for a connection that size. It would at least make it a lot more flexible.

                    Hi Stephenw10 - Can I run snort/suricata on a secondary machine? How do I go about doing that. Also how can I make the primary firewall High Availability? (by adding a similar hardware and being on standby?)

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                    • stephenw10S
                      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                      last edited by

                      As an IDS you could. In fact we had a write up of using TNSR tio mirror traffic to Snort:
                      https://github.com/Netgate/TNSR_IDS
                      But that would only be for analysing not for blocking.

                      pfSense supports HA: https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/highavailability/index.html#high-availability

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                      • S
                        SteveITS Galactic Empire @shaw222
                        last edited by

                        @shaw222 I don’t have a link but forward the ports to your VPN server running on your LAN. I was just brainstorming.

                        Pre-2.7.2/23.09: Only install packages for your version, or risk breaking it. Select your branch in System/Update/Update Settings.
                        When upgrading, allow 10-15 minutes to restart, or more depending on packages and device speed.
                        Upvote 👍 helpful posts!

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