The release of the compact distribution kit for creating firewalls and network gateways pfSense 2.7.1 has been published. The distribution is based on the FreeBSD code base with the m0n0wall project and active use of pf and ALTQ. An iso image for the amd64 architecture has been prepared for download, 570 MB in size.
The distribution is managed via a web interface. Captive Portal and NAT can be used to manage user access on wired and wireless networks. VPN (IPsec, OpenVPN) and PPPoE. A wide range of options for bandwidth limitation, limiting the number of simultaneous connections, traffic filtering, and creating failover configurations based on CARP are supported. Performance statistics are displayed as graphs or tables. Authorization via a local user database, as well as via RADIUS and LDAP, is supported.
Key changes:
- Base system components have been updated to FreeBSD 14-CURRENT. Updated versions of PHP 8.2.11 and OpenSSL 3.0.12.
- The Kea DHCP server is included, which can be used instead of ISC DHCPD.
- The PF packet filter has improved work with the SCTP protocol, adding the ability to filter SCTP packets by port number.
- IPv6 routing settings have been moved to the āServices > Router Advertisementā section.
- Part of the base system has been moved out of the monolithic ābaseā package into separate packages. For example, code from the pfSense repository is now shipped in the "pfSense" package rather than in a shared archive.
- A new nda driver is used to work with NVMe drives. To return the old driver in the bootloader, you can use the āhw.nvme.use_nvd=1ā setting.

Additionally, we can note that NetGate has ceased supplying the free āpfSense Home+Labā assembly, which was a variant of pfSense Community Edition with some advanced features transferred from the commercial version of pfSense Plus. The reason for stopping the supply of pfSense Home+Lab is the abuse of some suppliers who began to pre-install this edition on the equipment they sell, ignoring the licensing terms.
Source: opennet.ru
