BSDCan2009 - Final Release
BSDCan 2009
The Technical BSD Conference
| Speakers | |
|---|---|
|
Chris Buechler |
|
Scott Ullrich |
| Schedule | |
|---|---|
| Day | Talks - 2 - 2009-05-09 |
| Room | MNT 201 |
| Start time | 10:00 |
| Duration | 01:00 |
| Info | |
| ID | 130 |
| Event type | Lecture |
| Track | System Administration |
| Language used for presentation | English |
pfSense: 2.0 and beyond
From firewall distribution to appliance building platform
pfSense is a BSD licensed customized distribution of FreeBSD tailored for use as a firewall and router. In addition to being a powerful, flexible firewalling and routing platform, it includes a long list of related features and a package system allowing further expandability without adding bloat and potential security vulnerabilities to the base distribution.
This session will start with an introduction to the project and its common uses, which have expanded considerably beyond firewalling. We will cover much of the new functionality coming in the 2.0 release, which contains significant enhancements to nearly every portion of the system as well as numerous new features.
While the primary function of the project is a firewalling and routing platform, with changes coming in pfSense 2.0, it has also become an appliance building framework enabling the creation of customized special purpose appliances. The m0n0wall code where pfSense originated has proved popular for this purpose, with AskoziaPBX and FreeNAS also based upon it, in addition to a number of commercial solutions. The goal of this appliance building framework is to enable creation of projects such as these without having to fork and maintain another code base. The existing appliances, including a DNS server using TinyDNS, VoIP with FreeSWITCH, and others will be discussed. For those interested in creating appliances, an overview of the process will be provided along with references for additional information.