A few logical WebGUI questions

ghetek

Hey everybody!

I have been playing with the XML and php files for a few days now and here are some of the changes I am making. I wanted some logical user-interface help from the community.

Primarily i want to remove Aliases from the firewall menu and replace it with "Alias-Port", "Alias-Network", and "Alias-Host"

Each php file "firewall_alias_port.php, firewall_alias_network.php, firewall_alias_host.php" will be different in the following ways.

(firewall_alias_network.php)

I will add another column to the php file so that the column headers read like this "Name, Network, CIDR, Description"

(firewall_alias_host.php)

These columns will be "Name, IP, MAC, Description"
NOTE: the reason i am adding MAC addresses to this field is because I feel that it will be more efficient to have the XML on my setup as follows for hosts:

<alias><name>NET_BrotherMFC_WLAN</name>

<mac>00:16:CF:48:D8:ED</mac>
<descr>Brother MFC Device</descr>
<type>host</type>
<detail>Brother MFC Device||</detail></alias>

The end result will be that i want to get rid of the WOL section so that you can just click on the MAC address in the "Alias-Host" area to send a magic packet.

(firewall_alias_port.php)

This will remain mostly unchanged except for wording on the column headers.

I had one more question. Would there be any logical reason against me merging the DHCP reservation area with the Alias-Host area? I wanted to add a check box in my firewall_alias_host.php file that is called "Create DHCP reservation for this host?". I mean the way i see it is that if you are making alias rules based on IP addresses you might as well have the hosts reserved in DHCP automatically. That way even if you prefer to use your own DHCP (not pfSense), pfSense could still be a great backup DHCP that already knows where hosts need to be in the IP range in order for your firewall rules to all still work.