Home network monitoring with pfSense, Protectli, and a screen scraper
Programming Snapshot – Protectli
What is making the lights on the router flicker so excitedly? An intruder? We investigate with pfSense on a Protectli micro appliance and a screen scraper to email the information.
It's a shame that no routers simply display the network packet addresses that pass through them on an LED display. Because I'm curious about what's going on in my home network, on the advice of a work colleague, I bought a micro appliance from the Chinese company Protectli (Figure 1) [1], which runs the FreeBSD-based open source firewall pfSense. The box is about four by four inches in size and passively cooled, so there is absolutely no fan or other noise.
Figure 1: The Protectli micro appliance used as a router.
The installation is a piece of cake – simply load the distribution from the pfSense Community Edition website [2] onto a bootable USB stick, insert an mSATA disk and RAM into the Protectli's small case, and after booting, say yes to the installation prompts. Badda-bing badda-boom, pfSense's web GUI is up and running (Figure 2).
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
openSUSE Joins End of 10
openSUSE has decided to not only join the End of 10 movement but it also will no longer support the Deepin Desktop Environment.
-
New Version of Flatpak Released
Flatpak 1.16.1 is now available as the latest, stable version with various improvements.
-
IBM Announces Powerhouse Linux Server
IBM has unleashed a seriously powerful Linux server with the LinuxONE Emperor 5.
-
Plasma Ends LTS Releases
The KDE Plasma development team is doing away with the LTS releases for a good reason.
-
Arch Linux Available for Windows Subsystem for Linux
If you've ever wanted to use a rolling release distribution with WSL, now's your chance.
-
System76 Releases COSMIC Alpha 7
With scores of bug fixes and a really cool workspaces feature, COSMIC is looking to soon migrate from alpha to beta.
-
OpenMandriva Lx 6.0 Available for Installation
The latest release of OpenMandriva has arrived with a new kernel, an updated Plasma desktop, and a server edition.
-
TrueNAS 25.04 Arrives with Thousands of Changes
One of the most popular Linux-based NAS solutions has rolled out the latest edition, based on Ubuntu 25.04.
-
Fedora 42 Available with Two New Spins
The latest release from the Fedora Project includes the usual updates, a new kernel, an official KDE Plasma spin, and a new System76 spin.
-
So Long, ArcoLinux
The ArcoLinux distribution is the latest Linux distribution to shut down.