What is your favourite/best firewall on FreeBSD and why?

[Mike Tancsa]

On 5/20/2014 3:09 AM, Lucius Rizzo wrote:
> I have been looking into articles comparing firewalls that come with
> FreeBSD. There isn't much recent info on the net. I am currently using
> FreeBSD 10 with IPFilter.

It depends. I will use ipfw or pf depending on the app. But I never use 
ipfilter as there is really no one maintaining it in FreeBSD.  Also, if 
you are using RELENG_10, using pf can better take advantage of multiple 
cores.

For stateful firewalls, pf is the way to go for me.  The rules are easy 
to manage in a simple text configuration file which makes it easier to 
maintain across reboots.  ipfw is good (for me) where speed is 
important, and very few rules are needed.  Also, if you want to do 
traffic shaping, dummynet+ipfw works well. The traffic shaping solutions 
for pf are not so good right now.

	---Mike

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Mike Tancsa, tel +1 519 651 3400
Sentex Communications, mike at sentex.net
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