pfSense is a free, open source customized distribution of FreeBSD tailored for use as a firewall and router

Chris Buechler has released pfSense 1.2.3, a specialist firewall distribution based on FreeBSD: "pfSense 1.2.3 is now available! This is a maintenance release in the 1.2.x series, bringing an updated FreeBSD base, some minor enhancements, some bug fixes, and a couple of security updates.

We have been waiting a few weeks in anticipation of a FreeBSD security advisory for the SSL/TLS renegotiation vulnerability, which came last week and allowed us to finalize the release.

Change list: upgrade to FreeBSD 7.2; embedded edition switched to NanoBSD; dynamic interface bridging bug fix; IPsec connection reloading improvements; dynamic site-to-site IPsec; sticky connections enable and disable; ability to delete DHCP leases; polling fixed; ipfw state table size; UDP state timeout increases...."

Read the rest of the release announcement for a complete list of changes and enhancements.

Download: pfSense-1.2.3-RELEASE-LiveCD-Installer.iso.gz (55.2MB, MD5).

pfSense is a free, open source customized distribution of FreeBSD tailored for use as a firewall and router. In addition to being a powerful, flexible firewalling and routing platform, it includes a long list of related features and a package system allowing further expandability without adding bloat and potential security vulnerabilities to the base distribution. pfSense is a popular project with more than 1 million downloads since its inception, and proven in countless installations ranging from small home networks protecting a PC and an Xbox to large corporations, universities and other organizations protecting thousands of network devices.

This project started in 2004 as a fork of the m0n0wall project, but focused towards full PC installations rather than the embedded hardware focus of m0n0wall. pfSense also offers an embedded image for Compact Flash based installations, however it is not our primary focus.

Minimum Hardware Requirements

The following outlines the minimum hardware requirements for pfSense 1.2. Note the minimum requirements are not suitable for all environments, see the Hardware Sizing Guidance page for information.

CPU - 100 MHz Pentium
RAM - 128 MB

Requirements specific to individual platforms follow.

Live CD
CD-ROM drive
USB flash drive or floppy drive to hold configuration file

Hard drive installation
CD-ROM for initial installation
1 GB hard drive

Embedded
128 MB Compact Flash card
Serial port for console

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