In this tutorial, I will guide you through the steps to install pfSense on your VirtualBox, set up your network as shown in the diagram above, and configure essential features to create a mini home Network/Lab. Whether you're looking to improve your network management capabilities, enhance security, or simply learn more about advanced networking, this tutorial will provide you with the knowledge and tools to get started with pfSense. Let's dive in!

1. We start by going to Network tools in VirtualBox manager, Create two Host-Only Adapters, by clicking the create button you can configure the IPv4 manually, then move over to NAT Networks and create a NAT Network adapter and name it WAN You can configure the IPv4 manually also. Assuming everything went smoothly you should now have 3 NICs ready to configure with pfSense.

1. You can confirm that all is well by going to Network Connections as shown below.

Installing pfSene.

The following link is a stable release of pfSense 2.6.0 that worked for me, for reasons that I’m not familiar with the latest stable release from (https://www.pfsense.org/) would not work for me. Although the installation and Configuration process should be the same if you decide to go with the latest release instead.

https://archive.org/download/pfSense-CE-2.6.0-RELEASE-amd64/pfSense-CE-2.6.0-RELEASE-amd64.iso

1. Moving forward, once you’ve downloaded the iso file, navigate to Tools then hit New to create a new virtual machine, follow the configuration shown below, and hit Finish once you’re done.