pfSense is an open source distribution of FreeBSD-based firewall which provides a platform for flexible and powerful routing and firewalling. The versatility of pfSense presents us with a wide array of configuration options which, compared to other offerings, makes determining requirements a little more difficult and a lot more important. Through this book, you will see that pfSense offers numerous other alternatives to fit any environment's security needs. This book follows a cookbook style to teach you how to use the features available with pfSense after determining your environment's security requirements. It covers everything from initial configuration of your network interfaces and pfSense services such as DHCP and Dynamic DNS to complex techniques to enable failover and load-balancing. What this book covers Chapter 1, Initial Configuration covers the settings needed for almost every pfSense deployment including those for a firewall, router, and wireless access point. Through the recipes in this chapter, you will learn how to install and configure pfSense with a fully-operational firewall and router. Chapter 2, Essential Services explains how to configure the essential networking services provided by pfSense such as the DHCP server and dynamic DNS services. Chapter 3, General Configuration describes how to configure NAT and firewall rules and the features associated with them. Chapter 4, Virtual Private Networking describes how to configure pfSense to serve any or all of the four major VPN implementationsIPSec, L2TP, OpenVPN, and PPTP. Chapter 5, Advanced Configuration covers advanced networking features such as configuring different types of virtual IP, creating gateways, and bridging interfaces. Chapter 6, Redundancy, Load Balancing, and Failover contains recipes explaining how to load-balance or failover the multi-WAN interfaces to protect large and sensitive systems.