Hey everyone! 👋 Long-time lurker, first-time poster here. I'm kdawg, and I'm really excited to finally jump into the conversation. I come from a project management background and have been diving into setting up a proper firewall for my small remote team. We've been using a basic consumer router, and let's just say... video calls have been a struggle when someone else is uploading a big file.
So I took the plunge and installed pfSense on an old PC, and it's been a game-changer for visibility! But now I'm staring at the package manager and feeling a bit overwhelmed. I know I need to implement some solid traffic shaping and Quality of Service to keep our Zoom meetings smooth, but there are a few options and I'm not sure which direction to go.
I've been reading about the built-in traffic shaper wizard, and it seems like a good start, but I keep hearing about these add-on packages that can offer more control or simpler interfaces. My main goal is to make sure real-time communication (voice, video) always gets priority without me having to become a full-time network engineer. I'm comfortable clicking through GUIs and following guides, but complex command-line stuff is still a bit beyond me right now.
Could you guys help me understand the top add-ons for this? I'm especially curious about how they compare to each other in terms of setup complexity and day-to-day management.
For example, I've seen mentions of **snort** and **suricata**—aren't those for intrusion detection? Can they help with QoS, or are they purely for security? Then there's something called **pfBlockerNG**—that seems to be more about blocking ads and geo-filtering, right? Or does it have traffic shaping features too?
What I'm really trying to figure out is: if my primary pain point is ensuring stable bandwidth for collaboration tools in a team of about 10 people, which package should I be looking at first? Is there a "set it and forget it" option, or do they all require constant tweaking? I'd love to hear about your real-world experiences, what worked for your teams, and maybe any pitfalls you hit during setup that I should watch out for. Thanks in advance for sharing your wisdom