What is your primary use case for pfSense?

The typical use case for Netgate pfSense is VPN connectivity, content blocking, and IDS/IPS. Users typically implement it for these specific purposes.

I usually use it on premises, and I use it for different purposes. I use it for network security for my infrastructure, and I use it for my web servers and data servers that are on-premises. My main use cases for Netgate pfSense are proxy servers and IDS/IPS, blocking ads, clearing the network for adware and malware, and monitoring the network flow.

We have been building local firewall systems since 2008. The main use cases for Netgate pfSense are its exceptional stability and reputation as a premier network operating system worldwide. Millions of people are using it, and we have rolled out a new hotspot system that works from the cloud. The service is running under the pfSense portal.

I use pfSense as a home router firewall on enterprise equipment purchased from eBay. I utilize it for personal interests and not in a professional IT capacity, mainly for home setups and maintaining VPNs to family members.

My use case involved having a firewall from a different vendor, which was taken over and used as a bot in a network. This incident made me reconsider my firewall provider. I integrated pfSense, and I have not encountered any issues since. Initially, I used it as freeware as a virtual box, and it performed well. About two and a half years ago, I transitioned to physical boxes. We have more than one. My use case was to connect two offices and create an extended LAN using pfSense for point-to-point connections between the data centers.

I can restrict IP addresses by country, for example, which is very useful. If I don't have business traffic from specific regions of the globe, I can restrict them. I loaded SNORT and started playing with some of the rules and packages. Overall, I've experienced fewer problems since I started using it at home, so I'm very happy with it. It's very flexible. I think it's extremely flexible. I can configure as much or as little security as I want. A lot of it comes out of the box and I can fine-tune it toward my needs according to my knowledge, obviously. I think it's pretty flexible, yeah.

I have at least two pfSense routers at home in my home lab, serving my house. Additionally, we use it in my company. We have our satellite office in LA, and we use it as the main router. The use cases involve a router, firewall, and DHCP server.

I typically use it as an edge firewall.

I use pfSense for my home network firewall. I've installed pfSense on nearly every environment type, including Virtual Manager and most virtual machine hypervisors like Microsoft Hyper-V, ESXi, and even older versions like VM Player. Currently, it's running as a VM in Virtual Machine Manager on my NAS, showcasing its flexibility.

We use pfSense as our main router. We implemented pfSense to address the instability and limited customization options we experienced with our previous router.

We are a large church, and we use Netgate as the main firewall appliance. We have multiple WAN connections coming in, and we have about 500 endpoints connected to our network, so we use it to make all the bits travel where they need to be. We were using some other products that were closed-source, and they did not have some of the features that I liked. I liked OpenVPN. In terms of the VPN infrastructure, I had a lot of great information from people online. I could follow a lot of reviews and very good technical documents. It was about unchaining myself from a different licensing program that was charging me almost an extortionary rate for a firewall appliance but did not give me any better security than I would get through pfSense.

We use the Netgate pfSense firewalls for each location in the same metropolitan area. We implemented Netgate pfSense at the most basic level, aiming for a reliable firewall solution without incurring the high costs associated with Cisco products.

We use Netgate pfSense as a firewall solution for small and medium-sized businesses. Netgate pfSense offers firewall protection, VPN access, and a range of monitoring tools.

We use pfSense as our router and firewall on several sites. We implemented the pfSense open platform because we wanted to move away from SonicWall. We use the community edition of the software and purchase the Netgate router separately. I used white boxes initially, but now I'm also using the Netgate hardware. It's a great product.

I use pfSense as a home firewall and router. I don't use it for anything professional. When I first deployed pfSense, I was using my ISP-provided gateway, and there were a few things that I felt a little frustrated about. I didn't have control over the networks in my home and lacked some features, such as dynamic DNS, the ability to split different VLANs, multiple gateways, etc. There are a lot of features I use now, such as DNS or GeoIP blocking, that I knew about but couldn't take advantage of.

I work in IT at a German insurance company, and I studied computer science. I also work in the network sector, so I know a lot about network solutions. I work with VPN solutions, Fortinet, and other products. For me, pfSense is a private home solution for my family. It's not the solution in my company. I use pfSense as a firewall appliance, and the function is very good. But I think it's for users with more experience. It's not a solution for beginners. If you are a professional, it's not difficult to add features to pfSense and configure them. But it is difficult if you are not. I utilize the core features. I have pfBlockerNG, SquidGuard, OpenSSL, and WireGuard. So, these are the core features I need.

I have two installations at schools as firewalls. The biggest drivers for using pfSense were cost-effectiveness and functionality. It offers higher functionality for its cost.

I was looking to improve my security posture. Bottom line, I just wanted really high-quality cybersecurity. When I look at appliances for cybersecurity, they can get up to almost seven figures for some businesses. So, this was a good compromise for me.

We use pfSense in our clients' offices to provide secure network access. For remote workers requiring private network connectivity, we deploy a Netgate pfSense router in both the office and the user's home office, establishing a robust IPsec connection between the two. This configuration offers superior security compared to alternatives like OpenVPN, as remote users simply need to connect their LAN cable to the home pfSense for immediate and secure office network access. We primarily serve small organizations with 10 to 200 employees, deploying a pfSense router in each main office and providing OpenVPN or IPsec connectivity. Additionally, we offer optional pfBlocker-NG integration for advanced threat protection, enabling the blocking of traffic from specific geographic regions or known malware sources. We have several sites with multiple or backup-wide area networks. We use pfSense to manage these networks, configuring them for load balancing or backup as needed. To authenticate OpenVPN logins, we leverage Active Directory on our Windows Server, simplifying user management. Office managers can easily disable both Windows and OpenVPN access for users without needing to access pfSense directly. This centralized approach requires only a single robust passphrase for users to access both the VPN and the Windows domain.

We currently use pfSense firewalls at our branch offices and central server locations. I have implemented TAC enterprise support on three of these firewalls, with the installation of the third scheduled for this weekend. Our network infrastructure relies on VPN tunnels between sites, and I have successfully deployed an always-on OpenVPN solution that significantly outperforms our previous SonicWall VPN system.

I use Netgate pfSense as my office firewall. I implemented pfSense as a firewall, VPN, and content filtering solution using pfBlocker and configured it to verify HAProxy certificates. Most of our pfSense deployments are on existing machines with a small amount in the cloud.

I use the solution in my home network as the main firewall before all data heads out to the internet. I use it for DNS resolution as well.

We primarily use the solution as a firewall and for managing traffic.

I work for a small business. We have a number of different remote sites, so I use the solution as my primary firewall. I use it as a way for my remote sites to connect back to the main office via VPN.

Our use case is fairly minimal. We've been slowly replacing them. We're down to one unit. However, we use it for a site-to-site VPN to another location in New York for Michigan, and we use it for OpenVPN connections with some of our third-party consultants.

We use the solution as a gateway appliance for our own corporate network as well as that for many of our clients. It has become our go-to gateway appliance for clients when they're looking to to have a new network stack installed.

I use the solution in my home. It's my firewall, DNS server, DHCP server, intrusion detection server, and reverse proxy server.

I use Netgate pfSense personally at home and the data center, our headquarters, so it is for enterprise and personal use.

I USE Netgate pfSense for home networks, lab environments, and R&D. In production, professional career-wise, I have built pfSense production firewalls that run in various configurations and high availability for different organizations serving a different number of clients and servicing any amount of requests throughout any given day. It also serves thousands to tens of millions of requests a second a day from small to large deployments.

I use the solution in two of my homes. I have a home in the UK and one more in the US. I have two firewall tools running with a VPN link between them, and it allows me to easily administer and protect both networks, one in the UK and the other in the US.

We use Netgate pfSense to deploy to our customers.

I've set up Netgate pfSense for my friend's law practice for his access to VPN after the AT&T service dropped their FortiGate. It was so much easier to use. The VPN and VLAN support I needed that Meraki and AT&T tried to give me was crap. I also use Netgate pfSense at home as my router or office network. I also have the tool set up for a remote person in Texas for a site-to-site VPN when she needs it to do some work. I've currently got three of them that I use personally and professionally.

We use Netgate pfSense as the next-gen firewall because it has a lot of additional capabilities.

We use the solution as the main firewall and a proxy for load balancing our web servers.

We primarily use the solution as a replacement for commercial firewalls. We use it as an Internet Gateway Firewall product and use the VPN features.

We use it as a firewall. I've got a few deployed at different customer sites. All of them use OpenVPN for VPN software.

I have two different use cases. I use it as a firewall and security appliance. I also use it in layer three virtual routing scenarios.

We primarily use the solution for firewalling, site-to-site VPNs, and VPN management.

We're primarily using the solution for testing. We're also using it internally at our own site, mostly as a reverse proxy, but also for the speed. Not all firewalls have 2.5 and and ten gig WAN ports.

We're using our offices including the main endpoint VPN connections from the main office to our seller offices.

I use pfSense at home, and my friends and family use it in their homes. I'm also the IT solutions administrator for a council of governance organizations, and I use it for them. I use pfSense Plus at home and the community edition at some of my friends and family's houses. I pfSense Plus at home and use the community edition at my friends and family's houses. I have used the community edition multiple times in labs, but I use pfSense Plus for all of my enterprise applications.

We use our Netgate appliance in our office and resell Netgate appliances and services.

We use pfSense for IT security and load balancing the internet traffic across our three lines. We also use a package available in pfSense called pfBlocker that blocks some DNS records. For example, it doesn't allow ads to appear on the website. We have a site-to-site VPN with our different sites.

I use pfSense as a firewall for a university client with 10,000 to 12,000 users. I'm a consultant to the client, and they haven't introduced the product to their IT team. They are only starting to train themselves and use it to secure their environment from end to end.

I have three firewalls running my entire county and 11 smaller versions of the firewalls doing OpenVPN tunnels to my remote sites through StarLink.

We use pfSense as the primary firewall for our data center.

I use it for my firewall at home and when virtualizing labs to do routing between different network segments. I use it in the business that I am currently with at our main office and our other site. I worked at an MSP before that, and it was the firewall that we recommended to clients who wanted to go beyond what you'd buy at Best Buy, like the random Linksys or Netgear. I haven't touched the enterprise level, like the expensive ones where you might have 20 different Netgate segments with failover. We deploy it either on bare metal or virtualized on our own virtualization platform. We have not deployed it on any cloud. The primary cloud services we use are software as a service, so our firewall doesn't apply to that. If we ran our own set of servers in the cloud somewhere, we'd probably consider pfSense for routing between them, but we don't have that use case.

I primarily use it for hybrid home/business power usage at a very small scale. It is both home and business because of working from home. pfSense is serving us as the main routing firewall and network configuration tool. It is the front-end brain for everything in our mixed environment.

We use pfSense as the main office gateway for firewall router access and OpenVPN for remote access.

The tool is partly for home-based usage and partly for business usage. I am in the IT industry, taking care of the security and technology parts. I also run a private business in my spare time when I am not working. I use Netgate pfSense as my firewall to separate those two entities: my home and business. I also participate in providing server space for projects involving Azure Flex and Azure Core, which is kind of like an AWS situation but in a more centralized manner. I use Netgate pfSense to ensure that everything is separate. I use Suricata to weed out any malicious type of activity and to keep an eye on just to ensure that all the other functions, both personal and business-related, remains unaffected, intact, and devoid of any type of attacks or the other type of malicious kind of activity.

We are a reseller. We resell the product to our customers as we are an MSP. We use it for various different verticals, from manufacturing to schools to typical offices. That is mainly the use of this solution.

I use the solution in my company since we operate as a managed services provider that provides security solutions to our customers. I was looking for a device that had the required features my customer wanted, and that fit their budget, so Netgate pfSense is a product that clearly fits this space. Our company has started to deploy the tool for our customers.

I am in IT. I use pfSense for my personal use. I use it to practice networking and understand how networks work. I apply all the networking-related things that I have learned to pfSense at home. I also use it to isolate my IoT network from my regular network and from the devices I use for the cameras. The main reason for implementing pfSense is that I like playing games. With pfSense, I can place quality control over the traffic traversing over the WAN connection or the Internet. I am able to prioritize and limit some devices to allow me to have a better connection to the Internet than some devices in our house.

We use pfSense as a small business firewall and as a VPN gateway.

I use the solution in two ways. I deploy it commercially and I use it in my home lab as well.

I use pfSense for my home network firewall. I also manage two Cloud platforms that use it.

My company uses Netgate pfSense firewall routers for some clients, but I choose the device based on their needs. For locations like restaurants that require constant internet, I use a different device with cellular failover built-in. The cost-effective Netgate pfSense is a good option in simpler locations like doctors' offices. I can leverage Netgate's ability to handle multiple ISPs for clients with large internet demands. Ultimately, the choice depends on the client's budget and specific requirements. In my role, I decide what our clients should implement for their network security. I want to create a secure environment by separating the business network from the Wi-Fi and phone networks. To achieve this separation, pfSense uses different subnets to effectively block any incoming traffic attempting unauthorized access to the network.

After successfully using pfSense at home to manage IoT devices and separate their traffic from my computers and gaming consoles, I'm now evaluating its suitability for our hospital system. As the IT manager, I'm impressed and considering replacing our current firewalls with Netgate pfSense appliances. I implemented pfSense at home to proactively prevent security issues on my home devices.

We use it for the backup line for the internet. When the internet is disconnected, we transfer to pfSense.

I am using it for personal use.

Our most common use cases are for our corporate firewalls, and currently, I'm using it as our school firewall. So it's our perimeter firewall. So, we're running three firewalls on our network. So we have separate networks each because we have, like, different use cases. So we're running three at the moment. We've been running it for six years now, and so far, it's been good.

I use pfSense for various reasons, including implementing IPsec technology due to having limited branches. I use a VPN for secure connections, control the Internet or network flow, employ it as an NTP server, facilitate conference calls, and set up VLANs. I use it to run a proxy server.

We use Netgate pfSense for load balancing.

I install Netgate pfSense in various locations. It is also used for monitoring traffic and acting as a proxy.

I have used Netgate pfSense for a range of purposes. Initially, I employed it for VPN connections, mainly for personal and professional use. I also relied on it to maintain network equipment in a professional context. In the professional sphere, I have experience with both pfSense and Juniper, but eventually, I decided to phase out Juniper due to its high costs, especially for updates and the addition of new functionalities. pfSense's cost-effectiveness and the flexibility to transition to new hardware while retaining configurations made it a preferred choice. pfSense also stands out in terms of its rapid algorithm evolution compared to competitors like Juniper. Its scalability is another advantage, where adding a new box or reconfiguring can boost the firewall's capacity. On a personal note, I use Netgate pfSense to connect to my equipment at the data center. Currently, I have a highly available installation that requires two instances of pfSense. While I considered pfSense for this setup, I had to assess whether OpenSense might offer better features for future requirements before delving deeper into pfSense.

I use the product to test firewalls and VPN solutions.

We use the product as a perimeter firewall.

I am using pfSense as a firewall and VPN gateway.

We're using pfSense as a firewall and for web filtering.

I build my own firewalls, and I use pfSense.

We use it for its firewall features and VPN.

pfSense is used as our firewall and router.

I primarily install and test the solution. I'm not an expert in the solution; I mainly put them in place.

I use it as a firewall and also as a router because you can address what you want to do with it. It can do network advanced translation (NAT). It is sitting on my own server. It is on a remote server on a private network.

We have one Head Office and two main offices and other small branches. We want to secure our network from external and internal threats and block all unnecessary ports. We want to create a WAN with firewalls installed at all other offices and branches to connect to Head Office directly.

Our primary use case for this solution is Endpoint Advanced. I have set it up for the firewall and the open VPN connections.

We had been hit by crypto, and with our existing firewall infrastructure, we found out it didn't have geofiltering without an additional cost. That's still written from SonicWall and I think you have to pay extra for that. pfSense came with geofiltering and with logging as well, which I believe you have to pay extra for with SonicWall. So we didn't realize this until we got hit. We implemented GoIP filtering, and we also activated and stored the log files from within the firewall. I think there are some other feature sets that we used as well. The device seemed to be a little bit simpler to manage and configure through the interface. Of course with it being open source, we were able to stay current with that without having to incur annual purchasing or annual licensing fees like we do with SonicWall.

We are an MSP. We have some customers who have on-prem networks, and they want to have their networks protected by a firewall. They are quite small customers with 10 to 50 users. We use pfSense in order to protect our customers' network, to make some network automation, and especially to make VPNs to some remote branches to enable remote users to get access to the enterprise network. It is deployed on a private cloud and on-prem.

I use pfSense as a proxy and a firewall to monitor all the traffic to my network. It allows me to shape the traffic and eliminate bottlenecks that cause the network to slow down. You can use pfSense to catch some websites or make the network faster because we have applications connected remotely all over the country. We need to have a network with a reliable speed and no hiccups on the way because all our applications are on-premise, and the entire country goes to the same data center to get information.

We primarily use the solution to help our customers with firewall integration.

I use pfSense for OpenVPN and DNS.

I use pfSense to provide firewall and VPN services for small businesses. I have a handful of clients using it now and a new one in the works.

I am using pfSense as a secondary firewall and network management.

We are a small business and we use pfSense as our interface for the WAN. We use it for a Firewall and to ensure that all devices are operating. It provides our basic network routing needs, reporting on usage, such as IDS, and for managing individuals on network devices for controlling bandwidth and destinations.

We are using pfSense as a personal firewall for our systems and network protection.

We use pfSense as a firewall in the healthcare sector, education sector, and banking sector.

This solution is for my personal use, I've had a hobby of using it for a long time. I use it to protect my home network. Nothing is bulletproof but I'm happy to have a firewall at home scanning the ins and outs of my network so that I have a degree of security.

My primary use case is for controlling incoming traffic from various countries and blocking IP addresses if necessary. I'm the company director and a user of pfSense.

We use pfSense as a firewall and proxy server. We use it to apply different restrictions for different users from some data locations.

We use pfSense to protect our customers using IPS and IDS. We are a government agency and we manage the government network. We complete the setup and we are protecting our customers.

We are using the solution for a firewall and other operations, such as traffic shaping.

This solution can be used for a firewall, VPN, and VLAN.

I tested it for firewall, networks, and network stability and as a VPN access point.

We have a client who's got a number of VMs on a single piece of hardware. They needed to have access over a VPN to those VMs from inside their network. We use pfSense to provide the VPN link using the IPsec. In others, let's say smaller organizations, we will put a Mini ITX system that then connects into their broadband - typically sort of fiber or something like that - and just gives protection. The solution also allows us then to manage port forwarding and things like that.

We use the solution for a Firewall and a VPN.

We primarily use the solution for security purposes. We use it for a firewall.

I primarily use the solution for monitoring and learning about how to operate a firewall. I also use it for monitoring my home network as well as adblocking.

We have solutions from 10 to 5,000 users. One person alone can manage the firewall.

We primarily use the solution for security. It's a firewall.

I mostly use basic firewall services like blocking unwanted traffic and I use the geolocation tools to predict where potential attacks could come from. That's the main purpose, to protect our business network using pfSense. Within our organization, with a single installation, about 500 users are covered.

We have all sorts of users. We have admins, we have the finance guys, and we have salespeople using it. We created a captive portal for our teams as well as a guest portal. So in general, we are more or less happy. Right now, I use it not only for intrusion detection but also for ETLs. We are a telephony integrator. We use it for applications and radius, etc. I use it as much more than a firewall. I use it for telephony applications as a certificate authority.

I was working for a firm that has 70 employees. They are mostly working from home, so I needed a very well-structured VPN for remote working. We put it on Supermicro, and it worked fine, and it was above their needs.

We use the solution for blocking websites, banking, and malware.

We primarily use pfSense as a firewall. It's a DHCP server.

We use pfSense for the firewall, VPN server, client-server, and internal network.

We are a solution provider and deploy this product for our customers. We also use it in our organization. We use both Cisco and pfSense but for our customers we mainly use Sophos and pfSense. I'm the CEO of our company.

We are solution providers and this is one of the products that we deploy for our customers. This is not a product that we use ourselves.

The primary use case of this solution is to protect our business network.

It is my main firewall into the data center and VPNs for clients. It sets up my DMZ and does a whole bunch of other stuff. I am using the latest version.

We just use the solution as a straight-up firewall. There is no VPN access or anything like that. We just use it as a straight-up firewall and we run Suricata on it as a defense.

Our main business is for WiFi networks. Customers also ask us for simple firewalls, and we use pfSense to add a firewall to provide the complete solution. We are working with the latest version of pfSense.

I use pfSense for the security of my company.

We use it for small businesses, and most of my clients are using pfSense.

Typically, we implement this solution on an enterprise-level for our clients and set it up for them as required.

I use the product for many enterprise clients, including building construction, government, and education.

We have internet limitations here in Sudan. The financial institutions that I am working with do not have a lot of services on the internet. It is difficult but at the same time, we are safer and are not faced with any kind of compromised data. This solution is suitable for small businesses and charity organizations. Security is not just about the firewall, you need policies and procedures in place.

We primarily use the solution basically for the firewall, UTM content versioning, bandwidth shaping, routing, and IPS.

We have a hosted platform with our client. We've built a VPN site and the solution is deployed as a VM. The client connects to it and it protects anything that's behind it like a regular firewall. Everything we have there is hosted in a data center, all our servers and things that clients connect to. So we're using it as our gateway device. We are customers of pfSense and I'm the owner of our company.

We mainly use pfSense at client locations where the client is looking for a free alternative for paid/subscription based Network gateway with enterprise grade features

The solution pretty much is our only firewall security at the moment. It handles the integration with our active directory and makes sure that all communications are channeled through a secure network.

We use pfSense for our firewall protection.

I use pfSense as a firewall. I use it also as a VPN server and for the captive portal. Those are the main purposes.

At a custom company with several locations.

We use this solution as our firewall, proxy, IDS, IPS, and VPN.

Our primary uses for this solution are as a network firewall and a VPN Server.

We use pfSense as our firewall.

I had an appliance that died six months ago. Then I didn't want that hardware anymore, so I bought two new servers. A single power supply but dual on a network with three times four network cards. On that, I installed the pfSense (Community Edition). From inside to outside, I have about 15 to 20 node servers and users going outside. From outside to inside, I have only three tech support people, myself and two other ones. With regard to clients using the platform from outside to inside, on the servers inside, I have about 1000.

My primary use case for pfSense is as a firewall. We also use it for intrusion detection, intrusion prevention, website filtering, and quality of service (QoS).

We use this at all of our locations as our edge device, IPSec site-to-site VPN functionality between our offices and our AWS EC2. No matter what is thrown at this, the system handles it like a champ. We have both dedicated hardware and virtualized versions running in our infrastructure. So far we haven't found a reason why we need to spend thousands for an appliance like Cisco ASA when this handles all of our needs.

* We only use our pfSense as a stateful packet inspection firewall. * We have around 10 VLAN interfaces with many allow/block policies, VIPs, and NATs. * Running on VMware as a virtual machine.

* Firewalling * Routing * DHCP * Transparent proxy * DNS cache * VPN, etc.

We have mainly been using for our internet workstations.

In the past, we had different locations in different countries, and in every location, we had the same pfSense firewall. Therefore, the connection between our different locations was good and manageable. However, in the last two years, we have had only one location here in Belgium, thus the performance of the pfSense has been good, and we can manage great with the open ports and the closed ports, but now a firewall has to be a little bit more than just that.