pfSense
Category: BSD - Firewall - Traffic Shaper
Subtitle: #0 Turn an old PC into a firewall - pfSense
Author: Darin http://www.pfsense.com/
Date: 2007/4/10
I recently have embraced VoIP, one thing led to another and now I have a computer firewall with traffic shaping.
Keywords: pfSense firewall openBSD monowall traffic shaping VoIP
Summary: I recently have embraced VoIP, one thing led to another and now I have a computer firewall with traffic shaping.
Yes I know there are quite a few linux or BSD firewall distros out there, eg. Monowall, IPCop, Smoothwall the list goes on.
After doing quite a bit of reading and googling, I stumbled across pfSense, the following is from the pfSense website!
pfSense is a open source firewall derived from the m0n0wall operating system platform with radically different goals such as using OpenBSD's ported Packet Filter, FreeBSD 6.1 ALTQ (HFSC) for excellent packet queueing and finally an integrated package management system for extending the environment with new features.
The thing that attracted me to pfSense was that it specifically has traffic shaping particularly VoIP shaping so that when you dial out it automatically, stops all other packets that are not VoIP packets.
Seeing as I use an old Netcomm NB1300plus4, which by the way for all the bad reports Netcomm gets, it has never failed me, I must be lucky I guess.
I also recently purchased a ATA a Linksys PAP2T (great little unit IMO) to try and give as little money as I can to Telstra, I am on homeline budget $20 a month rental, of course calls cost more on this plan but that gives me the incentive to use VoIP as much as possible.
So my foray into VoIP BSD PC firewalls began, although I do use Ubuntu for my desktop and the distro I loaded MythTV onto for my media PC, I had never used any BSD system at all.
I thought ok here goes something else I have to spend hours on to get my head around, how wrong I was.
pfSense is only about 20 MB to download, in fact I had to go to the local milkbar and pinch a CD-R I only had DVD-Rs and wasn't going to waste one on 20 MB lol.
My hardware
I am a bit of a horder so I had a celeron 333 and a PII 450 to choose from well I only had a miini tower so the PII 450 wouldn't fit so the celeron got the guernsey. Yes that is all you need, I think you can even go lower in specs, though the 333 is perfect.
The thing you have to have or is advisable is at least 128 MB of RAM, after a bit of searching through bits and pieces I rustled up 2 sticks of 64 MB ram and one 16MB stick of RAM, don't ask me what type eg. 100 133 I just don't care, it works thats all I need to know!
By chance I also had a very old 3com 12 port switch, it's noisy and just not right, I plan to invest in a cheapo 5 port switch and see how that goes I will only spend about $30 on it, this is meant to be a cheap project!
I will start another page for the install process, I learnt lots with that, and there is 2 more pieces of hardware I have neglected to mention, all will be revealed in the install process ;o)
Summary: I recently have embraced VoIP, one thing led to another and now I have a computer firewall with traffic shaping.
Yes I know there are quite a few linux or BSD firewall distros out there, eg. Monowall, IPCop, Smoothwall the list goes on.
After doing quite a bit of reading and googling, I stumbled across pfSense, the following is from the pfSense website!
pfSense is a open source firewall derived from the m0n0wall operating system platform with radically different goals such as using OpenBSD's ported Packet Filter, FreeBSD 6.1 ALTQ (HFSC) for excellent packet queueing and finally an integrated package management system for extending the environment with new features.
The thing that attracted me to pfSense was that it specifically has traffic shaping particularly VoIP shaping so that when you dial out it automatically, stops all other packets that are not VoIP packets.
Seeing as I use an old Netcomm NB1300plus4, which by the way for all the bad reports Netcomm gets, it has never failed me, I must be lucky I guess.
I also recently purchased a ATA a Linksys PAP2T (great little unit IMO) to try and give as little money as I can to Telstra, I am on homeline budget $20 a month rental, of course calls cost more on this plan but that gives me the incentive to use VoIP as much as possible.
So my foray into VoIP BSD PC firewalls began, although I do use Ubuntu for my desktop and the distro I loaded MythTV onto for my media PC, I had never used any BSD system at all.
I thought ok here goes something else I have to spend hours on to get my head around, how wrong I was.
pfSense is only about 20 MB to download, in fact I had to go to the local milkbar and pinch a CD-R I only had DVD-Rs and wasn't going to waste one on 20 MB lol.
My hardware
I am a bit of a horder so I had a celeron 333 and a PII 450 to choose from well I only had a miini tower so the PII 450 wouldn't fit so the celeron got the guernsey. Yes that is all you need, I think you can even go lower in specs, though the 333 is perfect.
The thing you have to have or is advisable is at least 128 MB of RAM, after a bit of searching through bits and pieces I rustled up 2 sticks of 64 MB ram and one 16MB stick of RAM, don't ask me what type eg. 100 133 I just don't care, it works thats all I need to know!
By chance I also had a very old 3com 12 port switch, it's noisy and just not right, I plan to invest in a cheapo 5 port switch and see how that goes I will only spend about $30 on it, this is meant to be a cheap project!
I will start another page for the install process, I learnt lots with that, and there is 2 more pieces of hardware I have neglected to mention, all will be revealed in the install process ;o)
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URL: http://www.thegoss.com.au/modules/article/view.article.php/c10/9