Real World Talks: pfsense firewalls for home and business? // Featuring Tom Lawrence
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- čas přidán 12. 06. 2024
- Are pfsense firewalls any good for home or business? Which businesses are supported by pfsense? What are the advantages and disadvantages of using pfsense? How big can they go? Lots of questions! Fortunately Tom answers these and many more in this video.
// MENU //
00:00 ▶️ Introduction
01:29 ▶️ What pfSense is and Tom's experience with pfSense
03:43 ▶️ Tom and Open Source
04:38 ▶️ The benefit of pfSense being Open Source
05:21 ▶️ Systems Tom has deployed with pfSense
07:22 ▶️ pfSense licensing cost
09:09 ▶️ Using pfSense at home
11:45 ▶️ Virtualization
12:28 ▶️ Raspberry Pi support
13:02 ▶️ Virtualization vs hardware
14:37 ▶️ Tom's recommendation for small/medium businesses
19:43 ▶️ pfSense actual cost (pfSense vs pfSense+)
22:22 ▶️ Reasons not to use pfSense
24:45 ▶️ Tom's biggest pfSense deployment
26:07 ▶️ pfSense above 10G
27:11 ▶️ pfSense and VPN
28:32 ▶️ Handling lots of VPN connections
29:29 ▶️ Advice for starting a consulting business
31:09 ▶️ Technical skills vs sales skills
32:22 ▶️ The benefit of having sales skills
35:58 ▶️ It's about the customer, not the product you use
38:02 ▶️ How Tom got his first customers
40:21 ▶️ Why Tom has a CZcams channel
43:46 ▶️ This video is not sponsored by a VPN company
43:53 ▶️ Skills to learn in 2022 to get started
48:13 ▶️ Story 1 - Hacked client
49:10 ▶️ Story 2 - That will never happen in the real world
51:28 ▶️ Story 3- We've all done it
52:40 ▶️ Final advice
54:15 ▶️ Networking with people
// David's SOCIAL //
Discord: / discord
Twitter: / davidbombal
Instagram: / davidbombal
LinkedIn: / davidbombal
Facebook: / davidbombal.co
TikTok: / davidbombal
CZcams: / davidbombal
// Tom's SOCIAL //
Twitter: / tomlawrencetech
CZcams: / thetecknowledge
Website: lawrencesystems.com/
LinkedIn: / lawrencesystems
Instagram: / lawrencesystems
// MY STUFF //
www.amazon.com/shop/davidbombal
// SPONSORS //
Interested in sponsoring my videos? Reach out to my team here: sponsors@davidbombal.com
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Please note that links listed may be affiliate links and provide me with a small percentage/kickback should you use them to purchase any of the items listed or recommended. Thank you for supporting me and this channel!
#pfsense #linux #firewall - Věda a technologie
Are pfsense firewalls any good for home or business? Which businesses are supported by pfsense? What are the advantages and disadvantages of using pfsense? How big can they go? Lots of questions! Fortunately Tom answers these and many more in this video.
// MENU //
00:00 ▶ Introduction
01:29 ▶ What pfSense is and Tom's experience with pfSense
03:43 ▶ Tom and Open Source
04:38 ▶ The benefit of pfSense being Open Source
05:21 ▶ Systems Tom has deployed with pfSense
07:22 ▶ pfSense licensing cost
09:09 ▶ Using pfSense at home
11:45 ▶ Virtualization
12:28 ▶ Raspberry Pi support
13:02 ▶ Virtualization vs hardware
14:37 ▶ Tom's recommendation for small/medium businesses
19:43 ▶ pfSense actual cost (pfSense vs pfSense+)
22:22 ▶ Reasons not to use pfSense
24:45 ▶ Tom's biggest pfSense deployment
26:07 ▶ pfSense above 10G
27:11 ▶ pfSense and VPN
28:32 ▶ Handling lots of VPN connections
29:29 ▶ Advice for starting a consulting business
31:09 ▶ Technical skills vs sales skills
32:22 ▶ The benefit of having sales skills
35:58 ▶ It's about the customer, not the product you use
38:02 ▶ How Tom got his first customers
40:21 ▶ Why Tom has a CZcams channel
43:46 ▶ This video is not sponsored by a VPN company
43:53 ▶ Skills to learn in 2022 to get started
48:13 ▶ Story 1 - Hacked client
49:10 ▶ Story 2 - That will never happen in the real world
51:28 ▶ Story 3- We've all done it
52:40 ▶ Final advice
54:15 ▶ Networking with people
// David's SOCIAL //
Discord: discord.com/invite/usKSyzb
Twitter: twitter.com/davidbombal
Instagram: instagram.com/davidbombal
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/davidbombal
Facebook: facebook.com/davidbombal.co
TikTok: tiktok.com/@davidbombal
CZcams: czcams.com/users/davidbombal
// Tom's SOCIAL //
Twitter: twitter.com/TomLawrenceTech
CZcams: czcams.com/users/TheTecknowledge
Website: lawrencesystems.com/
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/lawrencesystems/
Instagram: instagram.com/lawrencesystems/
// MY STUFF //
www.amazon.com/shop/davidbombal
// SPONSORS //
Interested in sponsoring my videos? Reach out to my team here: sponsors@davidbombal.com
Please note that links listed may be affiliate links and provide me with a small percentage/kickback should you use them to purchase any of the items listed or recommended. Thank you for supporting me and this channel!
How about OPNsense firewall, is it also good for home and small business firewall?
PFSense is better than no firewall. However it pales in comparison to enterprise grade NGFW. As someone who has architected in the network security space for going on 12 years now, enterprise grade functions, filters, application awareness, cloud content analysis, AV engines, and vulnerability protections of Palo Alto, Fortinet, Checkpoint, and even firepower blow PFSense out of the water.
However, would I trust PFsense in my home network? Yes. Would I trust it in a simple SMB? Yes. The differentiating factor for me is WHO is managing it. Is it mr CEO do it all? Or is it a MSP?
However, vendors like fortinet for example have firewalls at a very affordable price. Heck Even Palo Alto has affordable firewalls now. I just finished a BOM where we bought 1Gbps firewalls with a bundle of NGFW features and we paid $2800 for 3 years.
Awesome video, you two. Encouraging, informative, and would love to see more in the future!!
Which firewall would you recommend for a professional who works from home?
After several failures with commercial firewalls that won't patch issues many of my vendors are now recommending OpnSense. I use it for many projects and would be comfortable using it at my workplace come hardware refresh time. Especially with the security features it has.
This was a lot of fun! Thanks thanks for taking the time to do this.
I enjoyed it really, honestly two of the best tech CZcamsrs
Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge and experience with all of us Tom!
We Do Love David & Lawrence
Lawrence System made me love open source!
Both of my tech persons together. This was an awesome talk.
This is gold. Tons of respect for both of you guys.
Thank you!
David and Lawrence, always talking about the right stuff. These guys are gold.
I love these kinds of videos. Although I have my own network setup but having videos where you have two big network youtubers having a real conversations without it being prescripted is refreshing.
We use open source in the military.
In one embarrassing moment I had to explain to an officer that his "new top secret battalion level chat room" was in fact just mIRC on a laptop and some of us had been using it since we were 14 years old.
Sounds extremely insecure.
@@tolpacourt Sure, if you don't have a clue.
an hour long video on pfsense, david bombal and Lawrence systems... i never knew i wanted this! 😃 i love this! 😊
Hope you enjoyed it!
2 of my favourite guys on CZcams. Loved every minute of the conversation. Best 1 hour spent. Legends 👍
Thank you Parry! Much appreciated!
@@davidbombal You’re a legend David. You give so much back to the community and help out so many people in need, it’s just admirable and inspirational. Wish you all the best 🙏🏻
Tom has taught me so much about pfsense through his videos. I've been running it since 2015. I started off with a Netgate SG3100 but ran out of puff when I upgraded my WAN to 1Gb. So I bought a second hand Dell R210 M2 with a 4 port Intel NIC and rolled my own pfsense box. Reddit was useful to get suggestions for the best hardware platform for my needs and I paid about £170 in total for the machine, NIC and SSD that it runs on.
I have multiple VLANs for different networks, WAN redundancy over 4G, multiple OpenVPN servers for me and the segregated guest network, custom firewall rules and UPS monitoring. All of this I've learned from Tom's videos. Tom's video's are a total wealth of guidance and help and his delivery is such that he gives a lot of confidence. If I want to do something with pfsense, Tom's channel is the first place I go to.
I have been running PFSense since at least 2011 Started with a Pentium 4 HT box and 100mb nic and gig intel pci nic and 512mb ram. As time went on i virtualized it in around 2015 and as of about 2019 run a dedicated box once again when I upgraded to gig internet connection. Which consists of an i3 2100 and 2 gigs ram with a couple intel e1000 nics. Great setup for just a regular geeked out family of 4.
The virtual server I had was not coping too well with the gig connection and rather than upgrade a server that otherwise worked well for my needs, just build a dedicated box to make use of the hardware offload those inexpensive intel nics offer. And its hardware that allows me to tweak the voltages of the cpu and ram ect, so its undervolted a bit, and consumes very little power. Yet its performance is just wonderful.
I have always loved PFSENSE.. it is great as well for traffic shaping.. When the kid has been playing on his computer a little too long, I can get in and start to get him to lag out ever so slightly. Where he can still play but gets a little frustrated and starts doing something more productive.... It is worth it for that alone lol.
@@wishusknight3009 I need to understand a little more about shaping - I'm looking to do that for the 4G WAN failover port and reduce download traffic to about 20Mbps and upload to about 2Mbps - reason being that the SIM is a prepayment with 25GB allowance and a 2 year expiry so only want it to be there for when it needs to be used. I also need to see if I can stop the dpinger process constantly pinging the 4G network when it's not required.
Stumbled upon this video after a few weeks of networking research (for setting up networking in my home). I'm a web developer who's dabbled in the business side of things as well and there's a ton of fantastic advice in your video here; thanks for much to the both of you for sharing!
I'm happy that you and Tom has had a time to conversation and sharing knowledge about firewalls. I hope there would be more videos between the two of you sharing your knowledge :)
Two of the best CZcams! Learned Cisco from David and Unifi and pfSense from Tom. You guys keep rocking!! We are watching and learning.
I use it extensively. Primarily to control access to the management network, but also to protect guest networks and add a secondary control to VPN systems. Been using since 2011. It's great!
I am so much fun listening to both of you guys, I've been using pfSense for more than a decade now.
Really like your insightful podcast videos on your channel David. Questions you've asked are really helpful especially to younger audience. Much appreciate to Tom who is open (not just open-source) and honest in sharing his opinion. Keep making more collabs like this with insightful questions!
Awesome video David! I appreciate Tom and you having this conversation. Very interesting and I enjoyed it. Thanks for all the videos you do. And to Tom as well. Great guys to learn from.
First time hearing about PFSense and already plotting how to deploy this...
Thank you David for the interview... and Tom is a true salesman, definitely going to build a sales skill as advised by Tom.
I love the way Tom speaks and he is the sole reason I went pfSense after decades of Sonicwall.
Thank you David for having Tom on a chat about pfsense
You are both amazing people sharing your knowledge, I think that’s what it’s all about, lots of respect, have been watching Tom’s vids for years fantastic!
Thanks 👍 Tom's great!
I bought the Netgate SG 3100 several years ago as my edge firewall, router, etc and I absolutely love it. This is coming from a 17 year network engineering veteran that is defintiely a Cisco guy.
A great conversation. Very much impressed with Tom's explanation even with tricky questions.
Two of my favorite influencers!!!
What a combination?
Another well invested hour of my time :) Now I finally have to try out pfsense myself! Thank you gentlemen !
My dear teacher David Bombal and my favorite IT coach. Thanks God. Bless you guys regards from Mexico.
I've been using pfsense for almost 10 years now, was in ipcop before. I'm loving pfsense.
Love pfsense. Started using it about 5 years ago. Thanks to Tom's channel. I do not use it to it's full capacity, but it works well and stable.
My two favorite CZcams guys for Tech information.
I went to OPNSense after Netgate was in denial on leaking (my) personal data on their (old) forum. As they were not serious about securing their forum, I extended that observation to their products.
Tom is the best! I started to use pFsense because of him
and my networks are working fine and secure!!!
Been running pfsens on vmware at home since I was a student ~20yrs ago,
and since having lots of projects using it, no matter big or small, from the cloud, DC to on-perm.
Learn a lot from them and pfsense never let me down :D
David great interview with Tom. Love his reviews of products, saved me much time and effort. Also have encouraged prospects to view his how to s. Tom and I have similar views similar and the value proposition open source. Again great job.
Thank you David Bombal. I have been on fence following you for a while and I must admit your content is super. You bring in the Top guns in subjects that we need now in real world. Thanks for bringing the likes of Neil Bridges, Tom Lawrence and Hammond. I am a fun and there is no going back....I love your content.
David and Tom, this was a very useful video. I think the title of the video is underwhelming, because when I first saw the title, and that the video was 56 minutes long, I thought that there was no way that there could be a 56 minute discussion about pfSense. But the second half of this video was highly valuable for everyone in IT, especially for people who want to broaden their role in it, or to change careers to IT.
I run a small shop with about 40 users. We use an old decommissioned Dell Haswell era desktop computer with a Intel quad port server NIC to route our 250 MB fiber internet using the community edition of pfSense. We've been using this for 4 or so years now. It has been rock solid. I has never NEEDED to be rebooted other than when it receives upgrades.
When the pandemic hit there was a frenzy to allow remote workers. Luckily I had already set up way for pfSense to authenticate to our Active Directory. We now have ~30 of our employees securely working remotely. The addition of OpenVPN remote workers was simple. Getting the remote computers ready for users to take home was what slowed the project.
We also have a site to site VPN used for our offsite backups.
We will be moving this to a Dell 1U server. I've tried this offline several times and it seems to be VERY simple.
I trust Tom. He's reputable and he knows what he's doing.
Two of my favorite CZcamsrs in one video!!!
I've been using PFS in corporate and small business since 2011. Lawrence does some great support videos. The perfect fit for small business with budgets to consider.
Thank David tag with Lawrence, I am a longtime old fan of Lawrence, he is awesome with firewall & network stuff. Thanks again David
This was amazing. Thanks for doing this Interview! Thanks Tom!
Very good video, thanks so much for all of the information and I love the interaction between both of you!!
2 of the best in the industry in terms of sharing knowledge!
You guys rock!
Love watching both of yours episodes!
I've been running pfSense for about 6 years. Initially I used an old PC, but for about 1.5 years on a Qotom mini PC. I'm quite happy with it.
Great job on asking what feature he is not recommending to use in pfsense. All the positive stuff you find on a flyer but the negative things are the ones you can only get from someone that has experience with the product.
Great conversation. Thank you for this opportunity where I did learn a lot. I'm looking to install a home pf-sense my self. Lets see how it goes. 😃
I’ve set up a pretty strong home network with netgate and ubiquiti due to watching Tom’s videos. Thanks for this.
Great video! I love the real life experience and an the sharing of knowledge. It can be intimidating choosing or changing a career thank you!
Interesting collaboration of two interesting people about different interesting topics.
Awesome video, thanks David and Tom!
Been waiting on a video like this for a while, thanks David!
Thank you!
Two legends together, amazing video!
Thanks you sir David for a new video...
Hope you are doing well...
Great show. to me Tom Lawrence is the God of pfsense. I have learned so much watching his videos.
this was a really great video. thanks to you both!
Amazing Interview. Thanks David and Lawrence.
Very happy to hear that!
I run Pfsense at home and love it. Very versatile and just chugs along. Running on an old HP Proliant NL54.
Great discussion, thanks a lot to both of you.
I started in pf sense as recommended by a friend, after all my issues with commercially available Home network Routers. I started with the Netgate SG-1100 this unit failed so I returned it. In its place I obtained a Netgate 2100 which is so much better in every way. I acquired a book Safer @ Home with pfsense which I am still working my way through. I have watched many videos from Lawrence Systems. I will say my entire Home network has been much more stable since using the pfsense box. I went down the route of ASUS, D-Link, Netgate, Bitdefender Routers, I have a Cyber intrusion which syphoned off 7 Tb of Data and my ISP was going to charge me for the data overage. This was the beginning of the journey to make safe the Home Network System.
Am looking into pfsense. Loved this video discussion to get a general sense of this software. Also great advice on developing sales skills, as this will help sell your business OR sell your solutions internally for getting the budget to actually implement it.
thnx, one of the best realworld IT discussions
Awesome Video Bro. Bigup to both your guys for the advise.
Thanks for interviewing Tom, David Bombal,(and Tom for agreeing!). When I need to research a network item Tom's channel is on the list. Love it when content creators I respect do this, appreciated the business and career focus. Especially talking points at 38:12, engaging and the comment on give more then you demand. Thank you.
Thank you James!
David and Tom, thank you so much for this interview, you're both some of my best guys, I also use opensource solution for security and VoIP, for security I do use pfSense, and most of the configs I've done through Tom's videos. David Bombal my master, I've enrolled in couple of his udemy videos and it always help at some moment in tech life.
The main difference between an expert and a novice is not that an expert doesn’t make mistakes, but that an expert knows how to recover from the mistake without panicking.
Tom has helped me no end! Started with Freenas 9, Now on Scale with Pfsense & Cloudflare... It's been emotional at times! Would never of made it without Tom's help. Although I still can't get HA PROXY to work!! lol X
Thanks guys, I love your great work!
I'm late to the party here. But love this collab. Tom is a super re(open)sourceful guy.
Thanks for sharing the conversation 😀
great conversation and fun to listen.
Men, the advice on here is legendary!!!!
Wow great meeting here. Very nice conversation. Keep it up! (you both =D)
What a beautiful interview!👏👏👏
I was using DD-WRT on my Linksys router before I found IPCop. OpenVPN on IPCop was easy as pie. Then I tried Monowall before it got forked to pfSense. So been using pfSense since 2008.
It always makes me happy 2 see 2 of my favorite u2bers 2gether 🤗
Love to see Tom on the channel!
Thanks for your support Ben!
Great interview. Tom is a good man.
I would really like to see something fleshed out as well as pfsense with turnkey hardware solutions, but on linux. The big reasons for me would be #1: vastly better hardware support #2: In-kernel wireguard #3: more flexibility and performance, nf/ip/x tables better scaling, etc
Great insights, especially on community involvement :)
I was confused about firewall which one should I bay Cisco firepower or fortigate.. ets, This is a great conversation, Best video that I've seen, you've been answered a lot of questions, Thanks a lot.
Thanks for a great show, wish I was 20 again😎 now I have an extra 40+ years, but there's always something to learn. Tomorrow I will have to setup a pfsense lab for my home/office.
Awesome collaboration...
Thanks for interviewing Tom Lawrence, that's how I found your channel. I just subscribed.
Thank you Richard
What a great enthusiastic interview :)
great discussion!
very interesting
Another great collaboration video!
Thank you Rodrigo!
Awesome interview, David -- subscribed
Old Cisco, iPFire guy, new to PfSense, great interview and info.
Pfsense is super good .As a network engineer , I primarily work on cisco equipment, barracuda ngf + wafs and fortigates. But I have used pfsense in a few businesses.
Just curious, how is pfsense compared to hardware firewalls like Fortinet?
@@yukinok25 I crashed fortinet fuzzing several times in the past 10 years. They're popular in schools... Yah
I love it! Watching both of you.
Very happy to hear that!
Loved this video. Thanks!!
NICE! What an awesome video guys, thanks!
Thank you!
I really enjoyed this!
i love both of them.great video
This was a good watch from start to finish. I wonder what Tom thinks about Untangle.. I know he has done a few videos on it!..
Tom is my go-to guy for pfSense how-to videos. pfSense is a Awesome product, that just works. I love it
Thank you for this amazing interview. I work in an IT servicing company in Germany. My boss says that he needs the cut we charge on selling hardware. Of course, it is hard to compete with the internet. Tom said that he lets the customer buy it wherever they want. Is he increasing the labour fee in these cases?
I use pfsense for home! I love it, switching back to my home router after my pfsense box went down, really sucked, my gf hated pfblockerng, now she doesnt mind it. The traffic is routed so efficiently. I set it up originally in 2018
David, make video on "How to choose laptop which has pre-built wifi adapter which is suitable for hacking and
where we get monitor mode, packet siffing and more"
Consequently, make video on laptop that is suitable for hacking
nice idea man you have
This was great. Good editing too.