Router maintenance

Hopefully by the end of this tutorial, you will have a working router with pfSense running and a web interface that can be easily accessed through a client computer. There are a few final suggestions we have for you once you reach this point. Firstly, once you reach the end, there will most likely be absolutely no need for you to check the display directly from the computer running pfSense. If you had it hooked up to a monitor, feel free to re-purpose that monitor for some other use. Even if you need to restart the router, that can all be handled from the web interface, just as if it were a consumer router that you would control from a web interface. Since this router does not have wireless capability, we recommend adding some sort of wireless access point to your network to allow wireless devices to connect, as well as a switch to accommodate multiple wired devices. Both of these are relatively cheap and easy to add to a system. Last but not least, we’d recommend keeping the router hardware itself in a safe, secure, and easy to access area of the house should you ever need to get to it. Simple housekeeping such as dusting it every few months will reduce noise and heat generation, greatly increasing the lifespan of your hardware and allowing you to reap the benefits of a high performing and heavily customisable router for years to come.