We have already demonstrated how packages can be used to extend the functionality of pfSense in previous chapters. For example, Snort is useful for blocking certain sites and for Layer 7 traffic shaping. HAProxy provides high availability and load balancing capabilities beyond what pfSense natively supports. Packages such as routed and FRRouting enable us to implement dynamic routing. These packages, however, only represent a fraction of what is available. The purpose of this chapter is to cover pfSense packages in greater depth. We will briefly discuss what issues package installation can raise, how to install packages from both the webGUI and the command line, and cover the most important packages. This includes some packages already mentioned, but many which we have not discussed previously.

It is impossible to do justice to all the packages available for pfSense within a single chapter, but we will cover the most important packages. The outline of this chapter is as follows:

• Basic considerations
• Installing packages
• The most important packages
• Other packages