The pfSense® Project is a free open source customized distribution of FreeBSDtailored for use as a firewall and router entirely managed by an easy-to-use webinterface. This web interface is known as the web-based GUI configurator, orWebGUI for short. No FreeBSD knowledge is required to deploy and use pfSensesoftware. In fact, the majority of users have never used FreeBSD outside ofpfSense software. In addition to being a powerful, flexible firewalling androuting platform, pfSense software includes a long list of related features. ThepfSense software package system allows further expandability without addingbloat and potential security vulnerabilities to the base distribution. pfSensesoftware is a popular project with millions of downloads since its inception andhundreds of thousands of active installations. It has been proven successful incountless installations ranging from single computer protection in small homenetworks to thousands of network devices in large corporations, universities andother organizations.
To download the latest version, see previous versions, or to upgrade follow theguides located on the pfSense downloads page.
Project Inception¶
pfSense software was forked from the m0n0wall open source project in 2004.m0n0wall was focused specifically on providing a firewall/router for embeddeddevices and was sized for limited hardware resources. Initially pfSense softwareaimed at providing a firewall/router solution with an expanded set ofcapabilities on larger PC and server style hardware. pfSense software hascontinued to evolve over time, providing firewall, router, VPN, IDS/IPS, andmore capabilities that work well on hardware from small home office size devicesto large service provider size servers.
