TNSR® vs pfSense® Software (2024)

Intro

The Netgate pfSense^® software user base includes every industry vertical, businesses from small to enterprise, local, state and federal government agencies, educational institutions and consumers.

Not surprisingly, It is often asked how pfSense software and TNSR^®software differ.

Simply stated, the pfSense project is an open-source firewall software distribution, and TNSR is a high-performance software router.

pfSense software has been in use since 2006, and covers a wide variety of secure networking solution needs. TNSR software is much newer, and to date has been more targeted in its secure networking solution coverage.

While it is entirely possible and plausible that some secure networking use cases can be addressed by either product (albeit with dramatically different performance), TNSR software is not positioned as a “pfSense software replacement”.

The Comparison

A high-level comparison table is shown below.

More detailed feature lists for pfSense software and TNSR software are here and here respectively.

Product documentation provides the most definitive feature detail.

Feature	pfSense Software	TNSR Software
Target Market	Firewall/Router/VPN solutions for Consumers, Businesses, and Service Providers	High-performance router solutions for Businesses and Service Providers
Lifespan	Project started 2004 First release 2006 Netgate controlling interest 2012	Introduced May 2018
Router	BGP OSPF Configurable static routing Static ARP IPv4/IPv6 IPv6 network prefix translation IPv6 router advertisem*nts Multiple IP addresses per interface	BGP OSPFv3 (OSPF6) Static Routing IPv4/IPv6 ECMP Static ARP BFD with dynamic routing VRF VRF-lite RIPv2
Network Services	DHCP server DNS Resolver NTP Server Dynamic DNS NAT mapping (inbound/outbound) 1:1 NAT Outbound NAT NPT Reverse proxy DNS forwarding Wake-on-LAN PPPoE Server	DHCP client/server DNS Resolver NTP Server Port Forwards 1:1 NAT Outbound NAT NPT NAT44 NAT-T CG-NAT (MAP-T/MAP-E)
VPN and Tunneling	IPsec Site-to-site IPsec Remote Access OpenVPN Site-to-site OpenVPN Remote Access VLAN support (802.1q) 802.1ad VLAN (QinQ) Bridging LAG GRE	IPsec site-to-site (Multi-core routed) 802.1q, 802.1ad VLAN (QinQ) VXLAN- Bridging Tap Loopback LAG GRE SPAN/ERSPAN memif
Firewall	Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI) GeoIP blocking Anti-Spoofing Time based rules Captive portal guest network Connection limits	L2 MAC/IP ACLs L3 ACLs L4 ACLs
IDS/IPS	Snort-based packet analyzer Layer 7 application detection Multiple rules sources and categories Emerging threats database IP blacklist database Pre-set rule profiles Per-interface configuration Suppressing false positive alerts Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) Optional open-source packages for application blocking	Integrate with your preferred vendor via the TNSR RESTful API Integration guidance is available
Proxy and Content Filtering	HTTP and HTTPS proxy Non Transparent or Transparent caching proxy Domain/URL filtering Anti-virus filtering SafeSearch for search engines HTTPS URL and content screening Website access reporting Domain Name blacklisting (DNSBL) Usage reporting
Data Plane / Packet Processing	Kernel-based processing	TNSR is not kernel-based processing TNSR leverages Vector Packet Processing (VPP) and Data Plane Developer Kit (DPDK) to deliver substantially greater packet-processing performance and throughput.
User Management	Local user and group database User and group-based privileges Optional automatic account expiration External RADIUS authentication Automatic lockout after repeated attempts	Local user database User and group-based management via NETCONF Access Control Model (NACM)
High Availability	Common Address Redundancy Protocol (CARP) Dual-node only	Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) VRRP Interface tracking Multi-node
Performance	L3 Forwarding: 1.18 Gbps per core IMIX packets L3 Forwarding (pfSense 2.4.4-p3 on an Netgate XG-1541) ACL Firewall: 0.57 Gbps per core IMIX packets through a 10K ACL Firewall (pfSense 2.4.4-p3 on an Netgate XG-1541) IPsec: 0.43 Gbps per core IMIX packets through an AES-128-GCM IPSec VPN tunnel (pfSense 2.4.4-p3 on an Netgate XG-1541)	L3 Forwarding: 9.84 Gbps per core IMIX packets L3 Forwarding (TNSR 19.05 on a Netgate XG-1541) ACL Firewall: 9.47 Gbps per core IMIX packets through a 10K ACL Firewall (TNSR 19.05 on a Netgate XG-1541) IPsec: 7.03 Gbps per core IMIX packets through an AES-128-GCM IPSec VPN tunnel (TNSR 19.05 on a Netgate XG-1541)
Manageability	GUI Console Port	CLI RESTCONF API SNMP
Open Source Scope	Source code available	Underlying open-source projects provide source code TNSR is only available as a binary
Commercialization	Free Binaries	Chargeable Binaries