The pfSense Fundamentals Bootcamp 2023 Edition

Learn the Fundamentals of the pfSense Firewall and secure your Home Network or Business with Confidence!

4.32 (419 reviews)

Udemy

platform

English

language

Network & Security

What you will learn

Operating a pfSense firewall with confidence by understanding all of the fundamental functions

How to install pfSense on VirtualBox and how to set up a pfSense lab

How to install pfSense on any physical (hardware) appliance from scratch

Configuring the pfSense DHCP server

Configuring pfSense DNS and changing DNS servers

Everything you need to know about firewall rules

Managing and backing up pfSense configuration files (including backup history!)

How to troubleshoot pfSense (restarting services, connecting with SSH, rebooting)

How to create new users

Creating widgets for your dashboard

How to install and configure OpenVPN from scratch

Installing and configuring Squid Proxy and ClamAV

How VLans work and how to set up VLans on pfSense

Why take this course?

Hello, and welcome to the course I wish I had when I started out with pfSense.

My name is Stefan, and I am an officially certified pfSense professional. I had the pleasure of learning what I know directly from Jim Thompson (the CTO and a Core Team Member of Netgate/pfSense).

After finishing this course, you will know everything you need to operate all the basic functions of a pfSense firewall with confidence. You will also learn how to navigate through your firewall with ease. You can use this knowledge if you want to implement a pfSense firewall into your home network, but you will also be able to integrate and operate a pfSense firewall in a business environment. This is a hands-on course - you are encouraged to follow through with all of the steps as I do them on your firewall.

Please note that you don't need a physical appliance to follow along with this course. A computer with 8GB of RAM is enough to run a virtual machine with pfSense (covered in the course).

Since integrating pfSense into my home network many years ago, I immediately fell in love with it. Back then, there were hardly any guides or tutorials for pfSense - so I decided to create my own - which has helped to turn my YouTube channel and my blog into one of the most popular resources for pfSense on the internet.

I have also worked with pfSense professionally in a startup for several years, where I built a complete hybrid-cloud setup using multiple pfSense firewalls - so I have seen both worlds.

This is the only Udemy course taught by an officially certified pfSense professional.
Because of my experience with the community of my blog and my YouTube channel, I know what people struggle with most, and I pay extra attention to those topics.
I leave nothing out - I don't assume you have any prior knowledge.
Everything is up-to-date - this course was made with pfSense 2.5 and is fully compatible with pfSense 2.6.
This course will always stay up-to-date. If anything changes, I update the course accordingly

In the end, I also tried to make this course fun. I am not a fan of "dry" content, so I'm throwing a lame dad joke in here and there to loosen things up and keep you motivated.

2023 Update: This course has been updated to use the latest version of VirtualBox (7.X)

Screenshots

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Reviews

Sergio

October 23, 2023

It's very good, I would like it to have more "optional sections" they were very interesting. Thanks Stefan!

Paul

October 15, 2023

I expected a little more meat on the bones -- pretty much everything here is just walking you through the install process and the basic GUI functions. This course was simultaneously not beginner friendly enough for beginners but too beginner friendly for anyone who already knows networking. As an example, if you don't know what DNS is, this won't help you as he glosses over the basics. And if you already know what DNS is, this is basically just showing you the pfSense page that helps you manage that. It does get a little better towards the end with the VLAN explanation, but overall it manages to hit the sour spot of not really scratching anybody's need.

claude

September 8, 2023

I was already using pfsense, but I did learn a lot in the course. Well done! keep up the good work. Knowing firewalls is a critical skill to master for anybody interested in IT. I highly recommend this course. Thanks

Brian

August 31, 2023

Enjoyed the course and learned quite a bit. Will definitely get the advanced course when it comes out.

Sebastiano

August 31, 2023

Very nice basic course aimed to introduce a tough sobject. I am used to pfSense, but I surely have sometimes to restart from a different point of view, as Stefan let us to think about.

Christopher

August 24, 2023

Great... I purchased a NetGate product and I'm following along. There are certainly a lot of options. I followed along and working on segmentizing my network IOT devices.

Jeffrey

August 22, 2023

I gave the course a 4 out of 5 because it will get you going with pfSense. It gives a beginning and ability to use basic functionality. I would wish the course to be a couple of hours longer with more details with firewalls giving examples. Say rules that allow to with your Vlans isolated communicate across them using things like a Tivo, Printer, Plex. I know have ideas but and know so much more but if the course was longer on an intermediate course add on that would be great. The teacher did well and he is easy to listen to and follow.

Julius

June 22, 2023

The scope of Stefan's pfSense tutorials are on point. Its information I needed to configure my home pfSense Gateway.

Mirko

April 14, 2023

easy to understand and as already said at the beginning, it is about the basics. It helped me a lot and I hope the instructor will do another course with more content such as how to deal with Outlook and squid enabled and when exactly I need to adjust the wan interface. So I'm looking foreward.....

Dimitri

March 28, 2023

Sommige stukken waren maar slecht voorbereid, daar zie je genoeg bewijzen van zoals foutjes die hij maakt of dingen die hij niet wist. Het noemt Bootcamp 2023 maar de meeste software die getoond werd was niet up to date. Voor de rest wel een goede beginnerscursus, ik heb er redelijk wat van geleerd.

Nathan

March 15, 2023

Very succinct and laid-back teacher. Was very comfortable throughout the whole course and was never overwhelmed, even during the tough VLAN and OpenVPN sections. Personally I had some trouble using OpenVPN and Squid proxies on my local system but this was due to having to use a Bridged VirtualBox network instead of NAT. Even so, I still understood the concepts and am confident that I can get them running on actual hardware. Thank you Stefan!

Steven

March 4, 2023

Gave the information that I needed. would have liked some more examples of firewall rules with examples to allow traffic between different networks / VLANs, but overall a good course to start me off. thanks.

Joe

February 10, 2023

He has a lot of knowledge, gives it in bites, I would love to a deeper course. I am thinking about paying the netgate to get education there

Herb

January 11, 2023

Seems to be doing a good job in trying to keep the course up to date. Virtual Box has new menus in 7.0 so we have to poke around a bit. Better explanation of block vs reject and what interfaces they go on.

Don

December 19, 2022

The pfSense Fundamentals Bootcamp 2022 So far I love the course. I see the instructor has answered all questions posted. so that is great because i have a lot of them.

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