Do people using pfsense all work in IT?
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should of run a poll! IT isn't my profession, but I like to tinker with things like pfsense and computer gear.
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Solid state electronics student for me. Tangentially IT, but not really at the same scale.
Love pfsense at home though undoubtedly running on an overkill machine. -
Retired IT type here, started out with MonoWall, moved to SmoothWall for more features but got tired of the lack of direction, progress, bug fixing and the horrible additional tools process there.
Spent a lot of time reading about small firewalls, both the performance and as important the community and decided pfSense looked like the best spot for me.
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Police
first job was in IT as technician but it was rather dull so I did not go back to it after doing my time in army. Computers&networks are more or less just hobby..
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I work in IT but only use pfSense personally. I did have it as a guest-wireless firewall in a previous job, but that's about it. While it is the best of the cheap or free options out there, it fails on useful logging, packages (too many beta packages), timely bug fixes and updates compared to the big boys.
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While it is the best of the cheap or free options out there, it fails on useful logging, packages (too many beta packages), timely bug fixes and updates compared to the big boys.
What kind of logging are you missing ? Considering that not only does pf allow very detailed logging, you can use tcpdump on pflog or the physical interface(s) either from CLI or webGUI, and you can export netflow data.
Regarding timely bugfixes and updates, I'd be inclined to agree, but I'd think with the significant increase in installed base to 170+k live pfsense systems, it will eventually be possible to improve pace through crowd-funding.
Anyway pfSense does still miss some "big boy" features (e.g. L2TP/IPsec, GRE NAT proxy, TCP multipath, IPsec IKEv2, IPsec redundancy with multiple Phase-1, IPsec VTI, DMVPN, L7 filtering etc), most of which however are not relevant to probably 95% of the SMB installations. And in return pfsense offers ISC dhcpd, ntpd, unbound, openvpn and so much more.
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packages (too many beta packages), timely bug fixes and updates compared to the big boys.
Re: Package versions, that's mostly the fault of the various maintainers just never updating the status. Most all of them are probably at least "stable" but that field is mostly ignored.
We fix bugs very fast in most situations. We may not have very frequent releases, but the bug fixes are public in the source repos and they can be applied as needed in many cases. And there are always snapshots if one needs certain fixes/features before an official release.
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While it is the best of the cheap or free options out there, it fails on useful logging
What kind of logging are you missing ? Considering that not only does pf allow very detailed logging, you can use tcpdump on pflog or the physical interface(s) either from CLI or webGUI, and you can export netflow data.
valnar, when you have a moment, please elaborate on what you meant by "useful logging" and pfsense limitations vs other platforms.
TIA.
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It's not the logging per se, but the user interface for it, hence "useful logging". If you are familiar with the Checkpoint and Cisco ASDM GUI's, you'd know what I mean - especially for troubleshooting problems.
Geez, sorry if I offended anyone. ;)
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It's not the logging per se, but the user interface for it, hence "useful logging". If you are familiar with the Checkpoint and Cisco ASDM GUI's, you'd know what I mean - especially for troubleshooting problems.
Geez, sorry if I offended anyone. ;)
No offence whatsoever taken :-) I was just trying to understand where you were coming from, because "logging" might mean different things to different people.
Anyway, as I wrote above, while the webGUI doesn't expose too all available functionality to the user, a knowledgeable networking professional can always drop to the CLI and do all sorts of troubleshooting.
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It's not the logging per se, but the user interface for it, hence "useful logging". If you are familiar with the Checkpoint and Cisco ASDM GUI's, you'd know what I mean - especially for troubleshooting problems.
Geez, sorry if I offended anyone. ;)
Well it's not really offensive per se, it's just extremely vague and unhelpful. If you can explain what "useful" means specifically, to you, it would help more than a vague complaint.
Also try 2.1, the firewall log filtering was expanded quite a lot.
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Did the network admin gig then moved to SysAdmin/Engineering/Development.
Have used pfsense to hold up 2,000+ students in the past. Some small hosting companies and test/dev environments frequently. Been using at home since 0.6.x or 0.5.x I think….Spring/Summer 2005...Helped Scott setup the forums originally way back when.
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:D
Hello, another IT admin here.Started using monowall at home, and quickly found about pfsense.
After a few months, I started to deploy pfsense at most my clients. At the time, sure mainly I was the only using it for vpn in to the office. Nowdays everyone connects trough the internet, and firewalls like pfsense aid a lot in keeping cost down, or better being able to get a massive pc for the firewall.
At the most important locations, I do have an HP DL380G5 with pfsense. It does make a diference. The best about pfsense, is that you build up as you need. so no matter if you are a beginner in networking, or have quite the experience, pfsense is a great tool to learn and use.
I would like to take advantage of this topis and thank everyone on the pfsense team.
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Yep, another IT guy here.
Been using pfSense at home after getting sick & tired of the consumer level garbage, using DD-WRT to get better functionality, and still needing to reboot the device every week or so. Tried Untangle, the gui was nice, but it made me feel like a donkey with Untangle riding me, dangling a carrot on a stick in front of me to purchase stuff. ClearOS was neat, but felt bloated. Stumbled across pfSense after the 2.0 stable release, and it was love at first install at home (virtualized under ESXi 5).
And we literally swapped out our Fortigate 80C last night at work (11 hours ago now) in favor of running pfSense 2.1 in a VM, everyone's been telling me today "the internet works so good now!"
Admittedly, if I wasn't in I.T. I'd probably still be limping along with yet another wrt54g flashed with dd-wrt …..
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I'd love to stamp a bit "LIKE" on your post…
Another IT guy - but primarily application focused (not networking). At home, I've played around with multiple router firmwares (dd-wrt, tomato, openwrt) and *NIX based firewall/router distros. Prior to switching to pfSense, I spent a couple years using IPCop, but also looked at ipFire, ClearOS, Untangle, etc.
In my opinion, nothing comes close to pfSense because of the following:
1.) It's completely open - no pressure to buy a bunch of crap
2.) It's a rock solid, no-nonsense firewall distro (no NAS, Media junk, etc.)
3.) It has tons of add on packages already available (my favorite - Dansguardian)
4.) The UI and base functionality can be easily modified
5.) The community is active and helpful -
Not in IT here I farm but do the IT role for friends and family maintain ~25 boxes mainly windows. I was driven to Pfsense for dual wan as a replacement to a xincom box to balance cable modem and dsl as sometimes even with both we dont have decent internet.
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Another IT person here. I work for a medium size non profit and do some network, some sysadmin. I started looking for alternatives to cheap little Linksys routers at our branch offices that kept having random issues. I tried IPCop as I was familiar with it but then found pfSense. After swapping in pfSense I liked it so much we got rid of the Sonicwall at the head office and eventually replaced everything with pfSense at around 30 locations. With OpenVPN it runs like a champ!
I also use pfSense at home and recommend it to others as well. I learned a lot from "the book" and just trying things out in VM.
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Just a retired IBM pEng (Hardware Failure Analysis) here, now living in Jasper National Park (Canada), I operate an 80 rental cabin resort which now offers wifi over its 10.1 acres of river front property.
Thanks to pfSense in part.
I never studied IT per say, but my old job required I kept my friends close and enemies closer… lol.
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I work in an IT related position (in Marketing) .. so do I count?
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I work in an IT related position (in Marketing) .. so do I count?
I don't know - can marketing people count? ;)
I play in IT - it can hardly be called work, does that count also?
