mirror of
https://github.com/opnsense/docs
synced 2024-11-17 03:25:33 +00:00
160 lines
6.4 KiB
ReStructuredText
160 lines
6.4 KiB
ReStructuredText
============
|
||
Introduction
|
||
============
|
||
|
||
Welcome to the OPNsense documentation & wiki project!
|
||
The documentation is work in progress and is updated frequently.
|
||
If you would like to contribute in anyway, please take a look at our guide
|
||
how to :doc:`contribute`.
|
||
|
||
.. image:: ./images/opnsense_logo-zilver_grijs.png
|
||
|
||
------------------------------------
|
||
Welcome to OPNsense's documentation!
|
||
------------------------------------
|
||
`OPNsense® <https://opnsense.org>`__ is an open source,
|
||
easy-to-use and easy-to-build FreeBSD based firewall and routing platform.
|
||
|
||
**OPNsense** includes most of the features available in expensive commercial
|
||
firewalls, and more in many cases. It brings the rich feature set of commercial
|
||
offerings with the benefits of open and verifiable sources.
|
||
|
||
-----------------
|
||
Mission Statement
|
||
-----------------
|
||
|
||
Give users, developers and businesses a friendly, stable and transparent
|
||
environment. Make OPNsense the most widely used open source security platform.
|
||
The project’s name is derived from open and sense and stands for:
|
||
“Open (source) makes sense.”
|
||
|
||
|
||
.. image:: ./images/OPNsense-Deciso-Screenshot.jpg
|
||
|
||
|
||
-----------------
|
||
Reading guide
|
||
-----------------
|
||
|
||
While reading the documentation, it's good to know how the various topics are structured, what their purpose is and how
|
||
to find what you're looking for. Maybe even more important is what this documentation doesn't offer.
|
||
|
||
If you're looking for deeper insights about networking and best practices in designing them, this might not be the best
|
||
place to look. Most of our documents and how-to's focus on how to use functionality included in our software and/or one
|
||
of it's plugins. Quite some books are written about networking, there are (online) courses available and wikipedia
|
||
contains a lot of relevant articles as well. Some interesting reads include the fundamentals about the
|
||
`OSI model <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model>`__, `IP addressing <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_address>`__,
|
||
`routing <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_routing>`__ and `network address translation <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_address_translation>`__.
|
||
Likely these resources are more suitable for learning about general network concepts.
|
||
Although we do try to include some context in our documents, there are often assumptions made about the readers
|
||
knowledge on (basic) networking.
|
||
|
||
Like many products and projects, ours grows over time, functionality extends and changes, which sometimes makes it difficult
|
||
to find what you need for the version your using. Although we try to keep our documentation up to date, sometimes text
|
||
doesn't reflect reality anymore. If that's the case and you think you found an omission, don't hestitate to open
|
||
a report using one of our templates on `GitHub <https://github.com/opnsense/docs/issues/new/choose>`__ or a pull request
|
||
of course if you're able to.
|
||
|
||
Always assume the text is intended for the latest version of our product, in time we might
|
||
add a version selector in the documentation, but given OPNsense is a security product, we advise to keep it up to date
|
||
anyway to protect yourself against the latests threats.
|
||
|
||
The releases section contains the changelogs for all versions we published over the years, if there are remarks
|
||
for an upgrade, this is a useful resource to collect the details.
|
||
|
||
Installation and setup is all about getting you started using one of the target options available.
|
||
|
||
The next sections should be quite familiair when working with OPNsense, as they reflect the options in the
|
||
menu of the product. In case you're not yet used to OPNsense, you can always use the search input in the left corner of
|
||
the screen to find your topic.
|
||
|
||
Both community and third-party plugins have their own area available, although they eventually register into the
|
||
same menu structure, it's good to know about possible differences between add-ons and standard functionality.
|
||
The level of support may differ between core functionality, as also explained in the "Support options" section,
|
||
feature requests and bugs maybe treated different as well (a lot of questions for a plugin which is being developed
|
||
by a single person, maybe less active than a group of people improving a plugin together for example).
|
||
|
||
When it it comes to building software on top of OPNsense or extending existing functionality, the development
|
||
chapter is the one to read. It explains all about our architecture, coding style, how to hook into available facilities and
|
||
much more.
|
||
|
||
Some pointers when it comes to troubleshooting can be found in the section with the same name, it explains a bit
|
||
about our issue workflow and some tips we collected over the years.
|
||
|
||
Last but not least our documentation includes some pages around project relations, legal guidelines and
|
||
ways to contribute to the project.
|
||
|
||
|
||
-------------------
|
||
|
||
-----------
|
||
Feature set
|
||
-----------
|
||
|
||
The feature set of OPNsense includes high-end features such as forward caching
|
||
proxy, traffic shaping, intrusion detection and easy OpenVPN client setup.
|
||
The latest release is based on a recent FreeBSD for long-term support and uses a
|
||
newly developed MVC-framework based on Phalcon. OPNsense’s focus on security
|
||
brings unique features such as the option to use LibreSSL instead of OpenSSL
|
||
(selectable in the GUI).
|
||
|
||
The robust and reliable update mechanism gives OPNsense the ability to provide
|
||
important security updates in a timely fashion.
|
||
|
||
----------------------
|
||
|
||
----------------------
|
||
OPNsense Core Features
|
||
----------------------
|
||
|
||
- Traffic Shaper
|
||
- Captive portal
|
||
|
||
- Voucher support
|
||
- Template manager
|
||
- Multi zone support
|
||
|
||
- Forward Caching Proxy
|
||
|
||
- Transparent mode supported
|
||
- Blacklist support
|
||
|
||
- Virtual Private Network
|
||
|
||
- Site to site
|
||
- Road warrior
|
||
- IPsec
|
||
- OpenVPN
|
||
|
||
- High Availability & Hardware Failover
|
||
|
||
- Includes configuration synchronization & synchronized state tables
|
||
- Moving virtual IPs
|
||
|
||
- Intrusion Detection and Inline Prevention
|
||
|
||
- Built-in support for Emerging Threats rules
|
||
- Simple setup by use of rule categories
|
||
- Scheduler for period automatic updates
|
||
|
||
- Built-in reporting and monitoring tools
|
||
|
||
- System Health, the modern take on RRD Graphs
|
||
- Packet Capture
|
||
- Netflow
|
||
|
||
- Support for plugins
|
||
- DNS Server & DNS Forwarder
|
||
- DHCP Server and Relay
|
||
- Dynamic DNS
|
||
- Backup & Restore
|
||
|
||
- Encrypted cloud backup to Google Drive and Nextcloud
|
||
- Configuration history with colored diff support
|
||
- Local drive backup & restore
|
||
|
||
- Stateful inspection firewall
|
||
- Granular control over state table
|
||
- 802.1Q VLAN support
|
||
- and more…
|