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Pfsense, Opensense and OpenWRT - what's the deal?

Hiya, just getting into networking and recently completed my Tp-link Omada stack, which I’m very pleased with. Have heard great thing about all three mentioned services above, but struggle to understand which to go for. Do they have different use cases? Is one easier than the other? Which one is recommended to begin with?

anamethatisnt ,

pfsense and opnsense are very similar. The pfsense devs has acted like jackasses towards the opnsense gang. They are both great for a router/firewall/vpn device. I would use external access points with them.
I think there are more addons to pfsense than opnsense.

OpenWrt is great when it comes to WiFi, but I find it much less intuitive to use for router/firewall parts. Could be that I am used to the way pfsense and opnsense do things.

Neither do switching from what I know, so pair the router with a switch of your choice.

aseriesoftubes ,

The pfsense devs has acted like jackasses towards the opnsense gang.

And toward their users. Ask the wrong question on the pfSense subreddit or forum and expect to get lit up. The Opnsense community is much more helpful and inviting in my experience.

chronicledmonocle ,

pfSense = Firewall and router system based on FreeBSD. Has both open source and commercial versions. Built for SMB to Enterprise uses. Extremely powerful with all of the bells and whistles you’d expect from a professional firewall product.

OPNSense = Basically pfSense with a different UI. It’s a fork of pfSense. Much of the same capability, but is built by a smaller company.

OpenWRT = Replacement firmware for embedded devices (as well as x86). It’s open source WiFi router firmware that runs on tens of thousands of devices. Many vendors will even base their custom firmware on OpenWRT and put a different skin on it (GL.iNet, for example).

Sunny OP ,

Perfect, thanks for summing it up for me! <3

TCB13 ,
@TCB13@lemmy.world avatar

That explanation is misleading because:

  1. OpenWrt does firewalling and routing very well;
  2. If you’ve a small / normal network and OpenWrt will provide you with a much cleaner open-source experience and also allow for all the customization you would like;
  3. There are routers specifically made to run OpenWrt, so it isn’t only a replacement firmware.
rtxn ,

They all offer more or less the same network services with different UIs.

OpenWRT is specifically designed to work as a lightweight system running on consumer-grade routers. If you want this, you’ll have to check the website’s Table Of Hardware to determine if your hardware is compatible.

OPNsense and pfSense are general-purpose FreeBSD-based operating systems that you can run on discrete computers or in VMs that act as network gateways. All three are free/gratis, but you have to make an account and go through the store page to download pfSense.

I personally use OPNsense in a VM.

Sunny OP ,

Thanks for the info :)

possiblylinux127 ,

OpenWRT is a iot operating system. It can run anywhere and everywhere. You can totally run it on enterprise gear and x86 machines. It can work as a firewall or a operating system for a light bulb. It also has the advantage of being very extensible and you can build custom images that have only the stuff you need.

The downside is that even though the wiki is fairly good it still requires a good amount of networking knowledge to use. It isn’t bad and it ships with sain defaults but if you want to get advanced you need to know what you are doing.

It also lacks a mechanism for automatic security patching. You need to manually update it which is easier with attended upgrades but it still requires button pushing and downtime.

snekerpimp ,

The newer Omada routers are pretty good, and their software is getting better. Personally I use Opnsense on a Chinese fanless router from eBay. Paid for an n100, got an i3-1113 with dual channel memory does everything I need no issue, and it has helped me learn ALOT. However if I had the $200 just laying around today, I would stick with Omada just for simplicity.

Gerbils ,

pfSense and OPNsense are firewalls. OpenWRT is router firmware. They’re all open source - to varying degrees - and they all have overlapping features and functionality.

Quick breakdown:

  • OpenWRT: originally developed as a replacement for the firmware on Linksys wireless access points. It has grown into a full Linux-based networking OS with extensible features and broad hardware support. The target devices are still mostly wireless routers/access points and the use cases it services are still mainly about wireless networking.
  • pfSense: Originally a fork of m0n0wall, it’s a BSD-based firewall distribution. Designed primarily for firewall use cases, it can be loaded on bare metal or in VMs, but it’s generally deployed “upstream” from wireless devices - typically it’s the device that all of your network traffic passes through on the way in/out of the LAN. Extensible architecture and a rich ecosystem of plugins means that pfSense can also serve as a caching proxy, load balancer, intrusion detection server and logging host.
  • OPNsense: a fork of pfSense. Almost identical use cases. OPNsense has a more usable/modern UI, but lags slightly in support for new features and plugins.

So the question of pfSense or OPNsense is either/or - you’d typically pick one or the other. Note that I’m staying away from the political comments that will invariably come up around this comparison. It’s enough to know that both have commercial offerings in addition to their open source versions and people have strong opinions one way or the other.

Either one of either pfSense or OPNsense in conjunction with OpenWRT is common, with OpenWRT on the wireless devices and pfSense/OPNsense at the egress to WAN. In your case, Omada already does what OpenWRT would do - along with some very limited versions of what you could do with pfSense or OPNsense.

It’s worth noting that folks often deploy these three open source tools as a method to regain control rather than using a third party cloud based solution like Omada. No judgement, just saying that Omada is the polar opposite of the ‘selfhosted’ esthetic.

Sunny OP ,

Just fyi; I am using the Omada system without using the cloud option, it is also selfhostable :) But thanks for the info/writeup!

possiblylinux127 ,

You are using the cloud though. They control it not you. If they push a bad update or decide to start selling your data there is nothing you can do

downpunxx ,

Clap clap clap. Great explanation

poVoq ,
@poVoq@slrpnk.net avatar

Lets not forget www.ipfire.org which is also great.

possiblylinux127 ,

Open vs closed solutions

I also like how OpenWRTs implementation of 802.11r doesn’t require any central controller

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