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Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘pfSense’ Category

A few pfSense quirks I got used to over the years

Posted by jpluimers on 2026/01/06

Everytime when installing a pfSense router from scratch, I seem to re-learn a few of the below quirks. So it was finally time to document them (:

Quite a few of my pfSense configurations are just doing routing between various networks, should not provide DHCP leases and do not always need or have a WAN connected (i.e. they are LAN-only).

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Posted in Communications Development, Conference Topics, Conferences, Cyberchef, Development, DHCP, Encoding, Event, Hardware, HTTP, Internet protocol suite, MikroTik, Network-and-equipment, pfSense, Power User, routers, Software Development, SSH, TCP, TLS, UDP | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

rcmcdonald91/pfSense-pkg-WireGuard: This is a port of the original WireGuard UI bits as implemented by Netgate in pfSense 2.5.0 to a package suitable for rapid iteration and more frequent updating on future releases of pfSense.

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/12/25

This is actually the WireGuard package you can install on pfSense CE 2.5.2 and higher: [Wayback/Archive] rcmcdonald91/pfSense-pkg-WireGuard: This is a port of the original WireGuard UI bits as implemented by Netgate in pfSense 2.5.0 to a package suitable for rapid iteration and more frequent updating on future releases of pfSense.

Note that the source code mentions a lot of web-technologies but that is because the majority of the code is the pfSense plugin. Underneath it pulls the actual build from [Wayback/Archive] git.zx2c4.com/wireguard-freebsd/snapshot which is almost exclusively C code.

Like WireGuardNT on Windows, it uses a high performance kernel mode driver.

Some more links on it:

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Posted in Conference Topics, Conferences, Development, DVCS - Distributed Version Control, Event, git, GitHub, Hardware, Network-and-equipment, pfSense, Power User, routers, Software Development, Source Code Management, Tailscale | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

Some notes on getting OpenVPN LAN2LAN VPN working from a GL.iNET GL-SFT1200 AC1200 Travel Router to a pfSense that is behind a Fritz!Box 7490

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/12/19

TL;DR: it failed

Since GL.iNET does not support site-to-site “Peer to Peer” OpenVPN (only “Remote Access” is supported) which is needed to route to/from the networks on both sides of the connection. the below did fail.

Original idea

Below was what I hoped to function.

Some links that should get me started (though my situation is a tad more difficult, see below):

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Posted in Ethernet, Firewall, Fritz!, Fritz!Box, GL-AR300M, GL.iNet, GL.iNET GL-SFT1200, Hardware, Infrastructure, Network-and-equipment, pfSense, routers | Leave a Comment »

If I have not found pfSense hardware by now: Gowin R86S mini PC offers 2.5GbE and 10GbE networking for $310 and up – CNX Software

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/08/15

I have been contemplating on pfSense hardware as there has been a large shortage on that market especially for having more than 2 ports (similar to for instance Mikrotik PoE router unavailability).

If by now I have not found any, I might want to revisit [Wayback/Archive] Gowin R86S mini PC offers 2.5GbE and 10GbE networking for $310 and up – CNX Software has 3 RJ45 ports and 2 SFP+ cages.

They found it via this 4 page review:

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Posted in Ethernet, Hardware, MikroTik, Network-and-equipment, pfSense, Power User, routers | Leave a Comment »

H3/H2 Net Card – ODROID – wonder how well pfSense supports it

Posted by jpluimers on 2025/04/18

I wonder how well [Wayback/Archive] H3/H2 Net Card – ODROID is supported by pfSense. It is an M.2 based PCIe network card that adds 4 ethernet ports of 2.5 gigabit each to an ODROID H2 or H3 series (so you have 6 ports total), ideal for some hefty router.

Pictures (from the above link) of the board, cases and mainboard below.

But first: Realtek NICs is not vendor supported on FreeBSD (which pfSense and OPNsense are based on).

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Posted in *nix, BSD, Ethernet, FreeBSD, Hardware, Network-and-equipment, pfSense, Power User, routers | Tagged: , | Leave a Comment »

Compact fanless firewall appliance offers 6x 2.5GbE ports for $230 and up – CNX Software

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/03/14

Reminder: check reviews for this little device: [Wayback/Archive] Compact fanless firewall appliance offers 6x 2.5GbE ports for $230 and up – CNX Software

If referred to:

–jeroen

Posted in Development, Hardware, Hardware Development, Network-and-equipment, pfSense, Power User, routers | Leave a Comment »

Reminder to self: mid-term solution for replacing Ubiquiti access points

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/12/11

Last year, after an already long sequence of doing stupid things, Ubiquiti sued Brian Krebs.

For many this was a reason to think about what to replace their Ubiquiti.

My cloud key had already died, I never installed the USG router, so this is the reminder to see if anything has come up to replace the Unifi access points that is easy to manage in a self-hosted way are powered over ethernet, do the same seamless handover and cooperative WiFi antenna management.

Some links from back then:

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Posted in Cloud Key, Ethernet, Hardware, MikroTik, Network-and-equipment, pfSense, Power User, routers, Ubiquiti, Unifi-Ubiquiti, USG Ubiquiti Unifi Security Gateway, WiFi | Leave a Comment »

Some notes on the PC Engines apu2e4 router board (apu2e4 = 3 i210AT LAN / AMD GX-412TC CPU / 4 GB DRAM)

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/10/27

Some links on the pfSense hardware I am planning to use.

Whereas apu1 was totally different, apu2, apu3, apu4 and apu6 are very similar. The letters after the first digit indicate evolution of the boards. The first and last digit set apart features. Together, they form a confusing matrix which is not really made clear at the PC Engines web-site as some intermediate categories are missing which makes it hard to get an overview.

Basically their shop site has the list of most current products and is easiest to get links to the actual product names. Like many Swiss companies, they accept multiple currencies, so there are three links to the shop:

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Posted in APU, Hardware, Network-and-equipment, pfSense, Power User, routers | Leave a Comment »

So long and thanks for all the fish: PC Engines apu platform EOL (in 2024, but still)

Posted by jpluimers on 2023/04/24

It was great while it lasted, so be sure to order within the next 12 months as  [Wayback/Archive] PC Engines apu platform EOL:

PC Engines apu platform EOL
The end is near ! After a long production run, AMD will accept last orders for the SOC used in our apu2/3/4/5/6 boards by end of June 2023.
apu phase-out We will do a life-time buy for a quantity of the AMD SOC and some other key components. We are willing to schedule customer shipments through end of June 2024. There is a 26 week lead time on the AMD SOC, expect limited supply until late 2023.

First ordered, first served. Binding orders may be required for large quantities.
New products ? Despite having used considerable quantities of AMD processors and Intel NICs, we don’t get adequate design support for new projects. In addition, the x86 silicon currently offered is not very appealing for our niche of passively cooled boards. After about 20 years of WRAP, ALIX and APU, it is time for me to move on to different things.
Thank you ! I would like to thank all of our customers for their business, and sometimes patience.

–jeroen

Posted in APU, Hardware, Network-and-equipment, pfSense, Power User, routers | Leave a Comment »

Fritz!box 7590 interface extremely slow : fritzbox

Posted by jpluimers on 2022/08/05

I tried the solution in [Wayback/Archive.is] Fritz!box 7590 interface extremely slow : fritzbox (remove the some 30-40 unused machines from the network overview), but it didn’t matter: since Fritz!OS 7.x, the Fritz!Box 7490 UI is just very very slow: each page takes 10+ seconds to load.

Hopefully I can get rid of these and move to pfSense based hardware eventually.

–jeroen

Posted in Fritz!, Fritz!Box, Hardware, Network-and-equipment, pfSense, Power User, routers | Leave a Comment »