How to Configure pfSense — a Beginner’s Guide

Step by step setup of a Netgate pfSense device

Teri Radichel
Cloud Security
Published in
31 min readNov 26, 2024

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I’ve written a few posts on this topic but they were intertwined with other topics. This is a real beginner’s guide.

You can download and install pfSense software and run it on your own hardware if you have some for free.

I prefer to just get hardware from Netgate. There are a few models of firewalls you can buy from Netgate with different software and hardware configurations. I’ve used the 3100 and 6100 with pfSense plus (not TNSR).

This is a walkthrough for the 6100 but the 3100 is pretty similar and I’m sure the lowest end model will also be similar but maybe with a few less ports or possibly features.

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Teri Radichel
Teri Radichel

Written by Teri Radichel

CEO 2nd Sight Lab | Penetration Testing & Assessments | AWS Hero | Masters of Infosec & Software Engineering | GSE 240 etc | IANS | SANS Difference Makers Award