pfSense/m0n0wall-Forked OPNsense 16.7 Released

[phoronix]

Phoronix: pfSense/m0n0wall-Forked OPNsense 16.7 Released

The latest major release is out of OPNsense, a BSD open-source firewall OS project derived from pfSense and m0n0wall...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OPNsense-16.7-Released

[Kendji]

Looking to build a custom firewall, looking into which to choose. Opnsene or pfsense. What are the differences?

[speculatrix]

Looking to build a custom firewall, looking into which to choose. Opnsene or pfsense. What are the differences?

in theory opnsense is a superset of pfsense, being a fork of it, with the stated aim of developing it faster.

https://opnsense.org/opnsense-beyond-the-fork/

I think pfSense is pretty solid, as it is pretty mature, but slower moving.

So what you choose depends on what you prefer, features vs maturity.

[Luke_Wolf]

Looking to build a custom firewall, looking into which to choose. Opnsene or pfsense. What are the differences?

OPNsense is to pfsense, as libressl is to openssl. Basically OPNsense is a fork and major refactoring of pfsense, and so in principle should be generally better, but I don't know how they compare at this point.

[darkfires]

I have experience with both, and OPNsense is far superior in usability, feeling much more polished. pfSense is full of dirty code (pain in the ass to modify) and a crappy UI by comparison. They forked long ago and OPNsense did it the right way.

If you are looking for a decent solution for a custom firewall, I would definitely give OPNsense a shot first. It runs well in a VM if you want to play with it before loading it on baremetal.

[Revan]

I have experience with both, and OPNsense is far superior in usability, feeling much more polished. pfSense is full of dirty code (pain in the ass to modify) and a crappy UI by comparison. They forked long ago and OPNsense did it the right way.

If you are looking for a decent solution for a custom firewall, I would definitely give OPNsense a shot first. It runs well in a VM if you want to play with it before loading it on baremetal.

The only thing polished about OPNsense is the interface, but no Network Admin/Dev Ops will ever recommend it. The guys at Decisio choose to have a fast update schedule as opposed to security testing their software like pfSense. They had loads of regressions until about half a year ago and some features where not working as expected. They mostly fixed all of them now but this just shows why this project exists: it's a PR stunt! That's why no major company will trust OPNsense.

If you're just using it for your home, I guess it's fine, you don't need the best security and the user interface is certainly a plus, but don't compare it to pfSense. It's like comparing a cheap D-Link 3 (router, switch and access point) in 1 router with a Cisco router.

[bug77]

in theory opnsense is a superset of pfsense, being a fork of it, with the stated aim of developing it faster.

https://opnsense.org/opnsense-beyond-the-fork/

I think pfSense is pretty solid, as it is pretty mature, but slower moving.

So what you choose depends on what you prefer, features vs maturity.

Are there features that are missing in pfSense (or any other firewall) at this point?
Between my router and locally installed firewalls, I've never felt a need to add another box to the mix. I can see how having a dedicated box can free your desktop from the burden of filtering traffic, but Windows will complain anyway if you completely disable the firewall...

[starshipeleven]

Are there features that are missing in pfSense (or any other firewall) at this point?
Between my router and locally installed firewalls, I've never felt a need to add another box to the mix. I can see how having a dedicated box can free your desktop from the burden of filtering traffic, but Windows will complain anyway if you completely disable the firewall...

It's not a "burden" in any sense unless you have a PII, it's that dedicated firewall solutions are not pointless like Windows Firewall (as 99% of the consumer routers have a firewall that is better than that), and have more advanced filtering rules/logic.

For consumers the firewall integrated in the router is usually enough.

[Jabberwocky]

I would like to try OPNsense/pfSense with docker. It would be useful if I could manage firewall rules between instances through an easy to configure / change frontend. Docker on FreeBSD just automates jails, I don't have much experience with FreeBSD jails. I found docker easy to mess around with while learning a how jails work along the way. I was using FreeBSD 10.2 at the time.

[bug77]

It's not a "burden" in any sense unless you have a PII, it's that dedicated firewall solutions are not pointless like Windows Firewall (as 99% of the consumer routers have a firewall that is better than that), and have more advanced filtering rules/logic.

For consumers the firewall integrated in the router is usually enough.

The router's firewall may be enough for consumers, but so is ZoneAlarm/Comodo/whatever. I mean, all you need is to be alerted when some program wants to connect to the Internet or accept incoming connections.