July 2020

 

Netgate Releases Episode 3 of TNSR Video Series

The latest TNSR video, Underlying Technology, is live on the Netgate YouTube channel. This is the third video in our TNSR Software Education Series and provides a high-level overview of TNSR’s software stack, showing where each open-source project fits. Finally, it touches on the contributions Netgate provides back to open-source software.

Our website, tnsr.com, contains more detailed information on applications, features, performance, deployment guidance and more, but this growing family of vignettes covers the essence of the product - and its value - in fast, easy bite-sized stories.

Check out this blog which outlines the video series and allows you to sign up for notifications circa all new TNSR content releases - videos, case studies, white papers, and more.

TNSR Application Spotlight: Site-to-Site IPsec VPN

Do you have key workloads moving to the cloud? Are business locations suffering from drinking through a straw’? Let TNSR supercharge your site-to-site VPN needs. The rise in worker mobility, distributed offices, and complex multi-cloud hosting of business applications is escalating organizations’ reliance on encryption. This puts computational strain on traditional VPN solutions, especially as bandwidth needs evolve from 1 to 10 to 40 Gbps or more.

Traditional router/VPN appliances buckle under the load - particularly when the packet traffic shifts towards IMIX. TNSR software shines at high-performance site-to-site IPsec, especially when compared to traditional solutions underpinned by kernel-based, single packet-at-a-time processing approaches.

For more TNSR use cases, videos, and data sheets, please visit our TNSR resource page. 

TNSR for the Home Lab

We recently shared a customer story that got the networking nerds here at Netgate (and we are proud to be labeled as such) pretty excited. Our sales team received an email from someone interested in using TNSR software for a home lab. The email suggested he needed something that could handle up to 100 Gbps throughput across his internal network, and scale up to 40 Gbps to support a future upgrade from his ISP.

The home lab belongs to Torstein Steine, an SAP software engineer who leverages his lab for software development, self-hosted cloud storage, and even a hosted game server for his friends. Read more of Torstein's story and how his search for a suitable software-based solution lead him to TNSR here. 

Ready to get started with TNSR software? Visit our trial page.

Advanced Church Technology Systems Group Extend Ministries with Cloud-based pfSense Software

For over 30 years, ACTS has been providing professional IT consulting and support to churches, church schools, and denominational offices - enabling them to more efficiently operate and extend their ministries. Their value add is simple. Finding the right IT hardware, software, hosting, and service implementation can quickly become complex for those who don’t do it every day.

More recently, ACTS has shifted to providing a host of cloud-based services and with this shift came the need for ACTS to ensure it had appropriate cloud connectivity, security, and network infrastructure redundancy in place.

To learn more about why ACTS chose pfSense software, read our blog.

New pfSense Video: Setting up Port Forwarding

Port forwards allow access to a specific port, port range or protocol on a privately addressed internal network device. This is most commonly used when hosting servers, or using applications that require inbound connections from the Internet.

The default pfSense configuration does not let in any traffic initiated from hosts on the Internet. This provides protection from anyone scanning the Internet looking for systems to attack. We created a short video to walk users through this process with pfSense software.

Netgate Appliance Spotlight: XG-1541 with pfSense Software

With up to 17.4 Gbps forwarding and 2.82 Gbps IPsec VPN throughput, the Netgate XG-1541 with pfSense software is the perfect appliance for businesses with even the most demanding throughput requirements. With pfSense software pre-loaded, the XG-1541 is a fast networking security solution unencumbered by traditional annual contracts, licensing fees, or artificial limitations.

Netgate is the only official producer of appliances that are designed, tested, commercially-packaged, supported, and pre-loaded with pfSense software. Netgate appliances are available directly from Netgate, or from our partners around the world. 

Other News 

We Would Love Your Feedback

Our customers purchase through different channels, including the Netgate store, our worldwide Partners, and the US Amazon marketplace. Regardless of where you purchased, we'd love to have your review, feedback, and rating directly on Amazon if you are using a Netgate SG-1100, SG-3100, SG-5100, or XG-7100 DT. Amazon's retail marketplace is obviously highly-visible, and customer reviews posted there help us spread the word about Netgate appliances and pfSense software - which ultimately helps us continue progressing the open-source project.

Beyond public reviews, we're always open to feedback and suggestions to improve our products and processes. There are many ways to reach out and talk with us!  Our sales team, TAC engineers, product management & marketing team, and customer care engineers are all passionate, knowledgeable and happy to hear from you.

COVID-19 Helping Hand Response Continues to Year-End 2020

Back on March 26, 2020, Netgate issued this blog describing our efforts to help pfSense software users through the tragedy of COVID-19. At that time, we stated these measures would remain in place through May 31, 2020. We weren’t sure then, nor are we certain now how long this situation will last. From our Vice President of Service Delivery, Scott Davis, "I can say definitively that the steps we took have been welcomed and impactful. I know, as I and my team are responsible for addressing each and every support request."

This need still exists as organizations and individuals around the world continue to adapt to stay in place, work from home, and take other social distancing measures. To that end, we have decided to leave our Helping Hand offers in place through the end of 2020.

Please refer back to the above-referenced blog for specifics, but rest assured, Netgate intends to do all it can to help pfSense software users with our zero-to-ping support, VPN configuration and connection support for healthcare providers and non-profits, and reduced-price TAC support subscriptions for everyone else.

It is the right thing to do, and it remains consistent with our commitment to provide leading-edge network security at a fair price - regardless of organizational size or network sophistication.

I’d also like to reiterate that the pfSense community continues its strong heritage of knowledge sharing and support. We heartily applaud that effort.

Be safe out there. Let us know if we can help you.

Netgate Tech Tip of the Month - What to Do When Locked Out of the WebGUI

Under certain circumstances an administrator can be locked out of the pfSense WebGUI. If this happens to you, there are a number of ways to regain control. This section of the pfSense book will cover the most common scenarios.  

Our extensive online documentation is available to help you through this and many other challenges.

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TNSR is a registered trademark of Rubicon Communications, LLC
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