DMZ (aka Demilitarized Zone) network as defined by Wikipedia “is a physical or logical subnetwork that contains and exposes an organization’s external-facing services to an untrusted, usually larger, network such as the Internet”. The purpose is to add an additional layer of security by separating what is exposed a public service in the DMZ, while the rest of…
Category: pfSense
How to force Dynamic DNS (DDNS) updates on a schedule at you pfSense
In this short post I will describe how to force your DDNS service to periodically refresh your IP on your pfSense. In theory, that should never be needed because when your WAN IP changes, DDNS service should notice it and update your IP on demand. However, I have notice my IPSEC tunnel never reconnected after…
How to fix R3 CA/Certificate issue on pfSense (expired on September 29th, 2021)
On Wednesday, September 29th 2021 a widely used Certificate Authority (CA) from Let’s Encrypt expired and brought the world to its knees. Well, at least my homelab, anyways. The exact message would be something like “The following CA/Certificate entries are expiring: Certificate Authority: Acmecert: O=Let’s Encrypt, CN=Let’s Encrypt Authority R3, C=US” The fix is quite…
Routing specific devices through your VPN gateway using pfSense
While I was writing a post on how to route specific WEB traffic through VPN, I’ve got inspired and decided to write another post on how to route specific DEVICES (your NAS server, laptop, iPhone, etc) through VPN while the rest of your house still uses the default ISP gateway. This kind of approach might…
Routing specific websites through your VPN gateway using pfSense
For those who followed my previous post on how to configure a VPN client on pfSense, one cool application for it is to route only specific websites through the VPN while the rest of the traffic goes through the default ISP gateway, as usual. That is interesting when you want to use an IP from…
How to fix the X3 CA/Certificate issue after upgrading to pfSense 2.5
If you recently upgraded to pfSense 2.5, you may have received notifications about some CA/Certificate entries close to expiring. The exact message would be something like “The following CA/Certificate entries are expiring: Certificate Authority: Acmecert: O=Let’s Encrypt, CN=Let’s Encrypt Authority X3, C=US” The fix is quite simple, just visit System >> Cert Manager >> CAs…
Fix your BufferBloat and speed your Internet on your pfSense
As bufferbloat.net defines it, “Bufferbloat is the undesirable latency that comes from a router or other network equipment buffering too much data. It is a huge drag on Internet performance created, ironically, by previous attempts to make it work better. The one-sentence summary is “Bloated buffers lead to network-crippling latency spikes. The bad news is…
Routing Internet Traffic Through a Site-to-Site IPsec VPN on a specific Wi-fi over VLAN
Yeah, I know, I need to work on shorter titles 😀 By reading a previous post, you may have created an IPSec tunnel to connect your home and office (or something like that). That is useful on its own, but it can be the case that you also want that all internet traffic to go…
Setup VLAN subnets on pfSense
This is another topic that I have referenced so many times that I decided to dedicate a post just for it and save some typing. The goal is to configure a VLAN subnet that has DHCP server and basic firewall rules to allow any traffic on your pfSense. This VLAN will be created from the…
Creating a new WiFi (over VLAN) on Unifi Switches
This is a short tutorial on how to create a new WiFi network, which can be over VLAN or not, using Unifi Switches. The process is a bit different than UDM-Pro, so here we go: On your Unifi Controller Web UI, go to Settings >> Network and click on Create a new network and do…










