Software Alternatives & Reviews

pfSense VS SmokePing

Compare pfSense VS SmokePing and see what are their differences

pfSense logo pfSense

pfSense is a free and open source firewall and router that also features unified threat management, load balancing, multi WAN, and more

SmokePing logo SmokePing

Smokeping is a tool for measuring latency.
  • pfSense Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-09-20
  • SmokePing Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-22

pfSense videos

pfsense Firewall Setup and Features in Depth Version 2.4

More videos:

  • Review - Pfsense: 5 Reasons to Use It
  • Review - Netgate SG-3100 Teardown / Speedtest / Review of this powerful pfsense packet pusher!

SmokePing videos

Smokeping

More videos:

  • Tutorial - How to Install and Config SmokePing on Ubuntu Server 16.04
  • Tutorial - How to Install & Integrate Smokeping into Librenms with Nginx on Ubuntu

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to pfSense and SmokePing)
Cyber Security
100 100%
0% 0
Monitoring Tools
62 62%
38% 38
OS & Utilities
0 0%
100% 100
Perimeter Security And Firewalls

User comments

Share your experience with using pfSense and SmokePing. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare pfSense and SmokePing

pfSense Reviews

The top 10 alternatives to OpenVPN
Netgate offers secure networking solutions, including pfSense Plus and TNSR software, which provide firewall, router, and VPN functionalities. These solutions cater to personal users, professional users, and organizations seeking secure and reliable internet connectivity.
Best pfSense Software Alternatives and Competitors
pfSense Software firewall is a robust, open-source security solution that is compatible with any hardware and can be tailored to meet your specific needs. It is a widely used technology, and many individuals seek dependable, popular software solutions with multi-device support, multiple concurrent connections, and protocol selections. Despite its usefulness, pfSense has...
The Best Open Source Router OS Software for Large or Small Networks
pfSense is a free and open-source router and firewall operating system based on the FreeBSD operating system. It is designed to be used on standard x86 hardware and can be deployed as a virtual machine or on dedicated hardware. pfSense offers advanced features and capabilities that are typically found in commercial routers and firewalls, making it an ideal solution for small...
Best free Linux router and firewall distributions of 2023
pfSense is one of the most popular operating systems today. It's a BSD-based system, similar to OPNSense, but with a longer history. pfSense started in 2004, and since then, it has grown to be the most well-known open-source platform in the industry. Although it gradually loses users to OPNsense, it's still an excellent system for new users because it has the most extensive...
Source: teklager.se
11 Best pfsense Alternatives To Secure Your Network
Unlike those of other available pfSense competitors, its capabilities allow it to be compared to commercial firewalls. You can also customize the pfSense firewall to match your needs based on the level of security and protection you want, as well as your specialist knowledge.

SmokePing Reviews

  1. Such a helpful tool

    Smokeping used to be one of my favourity tools when I was working as a SysAdmin long time ago. It's offers such a clever way of presenting the data, that it is super easy to identify any issues.

    I still wonder why modern tools haven't adopted this ingenious technique.

    👍 Pros:    Usability
    👎 Cons:    Not actively maintained

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, SmokePing should be more popular than pfSense. It has been mentiond 27 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

pfSense mentions (10)

  • Need some help on setting up home network
    Https://pfsense.org (netgate hardware is used in businesses). Source: about 1 year ago
  • Is pfsense.org down, or is it just me?
    I am having trouble seeing available packages, updating pkg, or getting a response from pfsense.org. Is anyone else seeing this or am I going to spend the rest of my day chasing bugs? Source: over 1 year ago
  • Help with VLAN
    From the PIA Client to pfsense.org PING pfsense.org (208.123.73.69) from 10.6.112.128: 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 208.123.73.69: icmp_seq=0 ttl=49 time=49.455 ms 64 bytes from 208.123.73.69: icmp_seq=1 ttl=49 time=51.927 ms 64 bytes from 208.123.73.69: icmp_seq=2 ttl=49 time=49.333 ms 64 bytes from 208.123.73.69: icmp_seq=3 ttl=49 time=49.133 ms 64 bytes from 208.123.73.69: icmp_seq=4 ttl=49 time=49.027 ms ... Source: over 1 year ago
  • Can Surveillance Station record offsite cameras ?
    The above setup is critical to a reliable system. I'd use enterprise quality routers for a store and home connection. I personally use https://pfsense.org but there are many to choose from and several open source. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Exposing Synology to web: best/practical practices?
    What I would do is put that thing in DMZ and install a good router behind it like https://www.pfsense.org. No affiliation, just been my router for many years. There's also it's sibling https://opnsense.org. There are many, just get a enterprise quality router. Source: over 1 year ago
View more

SmokePing mentions (27)

  • Anyone else using unifi to track the isp outages?
    I'd recommend setting up SmokePing or Vaping to get a better idea of latency and connectivity. Source: 11 months ago
  • N-Central, Connectivity Service and 15 minute minimums, oh my!
    Let me introduce you to a rather old, but still highly useful, tool for free. Takes a little leg work to get going, but pays off in style. https://oss.oetiker.ch/smokeping/. Source: 11 months ago
  • Is there any way to fix packet loss!?
    So I would run Smoke Ping (https://oss.oetiker.ch/smokeping/) for a while to get an idea of the loss. If it really is an external issue, you can try a VPN to hopefully pickup a different route. Source: 11 months ago
  • lightweight monitoring tool
    I personally like smokeping, https://oss.oetiker.ch/smokeping/ . Has lots of different probes so you can do more than just "ping if it is alive". Source: about 1 year ago
  • Cox Monitoring -- something changed around 9:30 last night
    I previously made a post asking for some ping results for various people in the area. Thank you to everyone who replied. Some of the comments encouraged me to set up a more proper monitoring system for keeping track of latencies to various servers, and to consider more than just ICMP ping as said packets are likely deprioritized. I set up an instance of SmokePing and have it monitoring a number of services, as... Source: about 1 year ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing pfSense and SmokePing, you can also consider the following products

MikroTik RouterOS - The main product of MikroTik is a Linux-based operating system known as MikroTik RouterOS.

PingPlotter - PingPlotter is a troubleshooting tool that helps IT professionals and neophytes identify, diagnose, and resolve network issues.

OPNsense - OPNsense® you next open source firewall. Free Download. High-end Security Made Easy™. Offers Intrusion Prevention, Captive Portal, Traffic Shaping and more.

PingInfoView - PingInfoView is a small utility that allows you to easily ping multiple host names and IP addresses, and watch the result in one table.

OpenWrt - OpenWrt is an open-source firmware based on Linux for wireless routers

Fping (open source) - fping is a program to send ICMP echo probes to network hosts, similar to ping, but much better performing when pinging multiple hosts.