Create Your Own Router and Firewall Solution

First Time Configuration

We have the IP address to connect to from our setup, and you most likely will be greeted with an image like this. Don’t worry, that’s perfectly okay as it is a local self-signed certificate. Click Advanced at the bottom of the page and allow an exception for this connection.

Once that’s done, the pfSense setup wizard greets us. It will create a few more settings for us, needed to get going with our setup.

But first, it tells you about the Premium pfSense Gold option for subscribers. That’s nothing we need to worry about, so just skip it and proceed to the next step.

We need to give our unit a name, domain, and DSN setup as the first thing. You don’t have to change anything, but you can.

The next step is to sync the systems time with a time server, making sure that it always has the correct time set.

Next up is the configuration of the WAN interface. In my case, there’s nothing to do as I get all my information via DHCP from my fibre connection; even less as it’s currently set up behind my normal network for test purposes. PPPoE and PPTP connection will work too with pfSense, but require a few more settings. Your ISP should have provided you with all those when you signed up.

You might want to change the LAN IP too, if you plan to run it and the rest of your systems on a different net. Again, it’s optional.

The main thing you need to do during these steps is to change your admin password away from the default one; never leave a password on the default settings.

And that’s it. Hit the reload button to get to the actual graphic user interface (GUI).

It will reload the system with your new settings and give you direct links to refresh the page and continue as well as another option to enter the subscription model.