Advance Configurations

Maintaining a pfSense can be problematic if the configurations are not fine tuned to meet your network requirements.

pfSense Advanced Settings

The advanced settings available under System > Advanced. There are there for additional tweaking or for those who need the functionality given.

Admin Access

webConfigurator

These will change settings related to web interface of your pfSense instance

• Protocol: HTTPS
• TCP Port: defaults to 443 but you may change to a non-common port in production
• Max Processes: 2 (number of webConfigurator processes to run allowing more users/browsers to access the GUI concurrently), and many more...

Secure Shell

You need to enable ssh to access its CLI remotely. SSH key methods and port number can be configured

Serial Communication

If you desire to use serial communication as of a router or a switch you may configure these options.

Console Options

If you dont tick the option, it will allow anyone to access the physical console of the pfSense server

Firewall & NAT

In production, depending on number of hosts and concurrent connections, you may need to increase values of Firewall Maximum States or Firewall Maximum Table Entries.

If you tick Disable Firewall option, it will convert the pfSense in to a normal routing device, remember it will remove NAT functions as well.

Networking

You may control IPv6 capabilities of the pfSense from this section and enable/disable IPv6 on the device.

We recommend not to touch this.

By any chance, if you need to change WAN interface addresses regularly, it is a good option to tick Reset All States

Notifications

In production environment, it is a good idea to configure SMTP settings for your pfsense.

Package Manager

You will find the package manager which controls installing and uninstalling of different 3rd party packages in System drop down menu.

Installed Packges

You can Remove , Update , Reinstall any installed package using this tab.

Available Packages

Any new 3rd party packages can be installed very easily using this tab and it gives a nice UI where you can search what you want and install if available.