PfSense


pfSense is an open source firewall/router computer software distribution based on FreeBSD.
It is installed on a physical computer or a virtual machine to make a dedicated firewall/router for a network. It can be configured and upgraded through a web-based interface, and requires no knowledge of the underlying FreeBSD system to manage.

History

The pfSense project started in 2004 as a fork of the m0n0wall project by Chris Buechler and Scott Ullrich and the first release was in 2006. The name was derived from the fact that the software uses the packet-filtering tool, PF.
In 2014, a competing open source firewall and routing software project, OPNsense, was forked from pfsense, with the first official release in Jan 2015. Both pfsense and OPNsense are under active development, while the original m0n0wall project has been discontinued.