pfSense alternative for internet cafes: keep the box or replace it?

The box under the counter has no screen. It has a sticker with an IP address on it and a password that lives in a chat with a freelancer you have not heard from since last spring. It runs pfSense and it works. Then a regular needs a port opened for a tournament. Or the guest Wi-Fi eats the line on a Friday night. That is the moment you find out nobody in the building can log in and change a thing without being scared of taking the whole cafe offline.

This post is for that moment: does the box stay or does it make way for something your own staff can run?

pfSense is rarely the problem

Let's be fair to it first. pfSense is an open source firewall and router distribution built on FreeBSD and maintained by Netgate. It usually lives on a dedicated box and you configure it through a web interface. It does multi-WAN, captive portal and VPN. Packages such as pfBlockerNG and Squid add blocklists and a proxy on top. Plenty of serious networks run on it.

None of that helps when the person who understood your setup is gone.

The web interface assumes you know what an interface assignment is, what an alias is and why rule order matters. A cashier does not. An owner who opens a cafe to run a cafe usually does not either. So the box gets treated like a fuse panel: nobody touches it and everyone hopes it keeps working.

The second problem is quieter. pfSense sees MAC addresses and IP addresses. Your cafe sees PC 14, the PlayStation in the corner and the guest Wi-Fi. When a customer complains that the line is slow, the router can tell you that 192.168.1.137 is pulling a lot of traffic. Working out that 192.168.1.137 is the station by the window means opening the cafe software in one window, the DHCP leases in another and matching them by hand. Most staff give up halfway.

When pfSense is the right call

We sell an alternative and we will still tell you to keep pfSense in these cases:

• You have an IT person. On staff or a freelancer who actually picks up the phone. pfSense in capable hands is a fine cafe router and switching away buys you little.
• You need VPN. Remote access into the office, a site-to-site link between two branches. pfSense does this well. The HandyCafe gateway described below has no VPN server.
• The network is more than a cafe. If the same line also serves an office upstairs or a shop next door with its own needs, a general-purpose firewall is the better fit than a cafe tool.
• You want a dedicated BSD box. Some owners simply prefer a router that runs on its own hardware and has nothing to do with Windows. That is a reasonable preference and we are not going to argue you out of it.

If one of those describes you, keep the box. Pay someone to write down how it is set up, put that document somewhere other than a chat and stop reading here.

When a cafe-aware gateway makes more sense

The other case is the common one. The people who need to change the network are the people behind the counter, during opening hours, with a queue. They already spend all day in the cafe software. The network should be in there too.

That is the situation HandyCafe Gateway was built for. It turns a Windows PC with two network cards into the cafe's router. You never sit at that PC after setup. Everything day to day happens on the Internet page in HandyCafe Server, in tabs your staff can read: Overview, WAN, Devices, Web Filter, Bandwidth, Port Forwarding, Firewall, Options and Setup.

The device list uses your station names

A device the Server knows as a station is matched to it. The Devices tab reads "PC 14", not an address. Consoles, phones on the guest Wi-Fi and the printer nobody remembers plugging in show up too. You can name the ones the gateway could not work out.

Capping a station that is pulling a huge game update becomes a setting on that station or its group. Groups follow the obvious shapes: stations in one, consoles in another, guest Wi-Fi capped hardest. A limit class can put one shared ceiling on the whole guest Wi-Fi on top of each device's own cap. If you are not sure how much line you need in the first place, our piece on internet speed for a gaming cafe runs the numbers.

Blocking a station that has not paid keeps HandyCafe's own services reachable. You cut off the customer without losing the machine.

Changes that undo themselves

Editing a setting does not change the network yet. Edits collect in a change bar and go live when someone presses Apply. Server then checks it can still reach the gateway. If it cannot, the gateway puts the previous settings back on its own after a minute.

Changing which network card faces the modem goes one step further. The gateway applies it, then asks Yes, keep these settings and reverts after a minute if nobody answers. A wrong click no longer means a drive across town with a laptop and a cable.

One exception worth knowing: moving the gateway to a new address on the cafe network is kept at once and not undone, because every cafe PC has to move with it.

Game ports without a spreadsheet

The gateway ships with ready port lists for 26 popular games, Steam and CS2 among them. You can edit them like any list of your own. A policy routing rule can send one of those lists out over a chosen internet line, which is handy when you want a game off the line the downloads are using.

For consoles there are two routes. A port forward points a port at one device. If that device has no fixed address the window offers Give fixed IP so the forward does not break next week. Or you turn on UPnP and let the consoles ask for their own ports and report Open NAT. Keep UPnP to the console group. Anything on a station could ask too.

Two lines without a networking course

A second line goes in on the WAN tab with DHCP, Static IP or PPPoE. On pfSense that means gateway groups somebody builds by hand. Here each line shows its status, latency and loss in one list and the gateway steers traffic around a poor one. Setting up sharing and a backup without kicking players out of their matches has its own post: dual WAN failover for a gaming cafe.

Updates that roll themselves back

An unmanaged pfSense box tends to stay on whatever version the freelancer installed. The gateway updates itself instead. It downloads in the background and keeps a file only if it is signed by HandyCafe and its checksum matches. Installation waits for a quiet moment: five minutes in a row with nobody signed in to guest Wi-Fi and the whole cafe moving under about 512 KB a minute. If the new version does not answer within 90 seconds, the updater puts the old one back. You can switch to approving each update yourself.

What changes day to day

pfSense can do most of these things in the right hands. The table is about a cafe where nobody owns the router.

The connection log deserves one more line. It records where a device went, not what it said. Traffic stays encrypted and the gateway does not open it. Entries can be exported as CSV when someone outside the cafe asks.

Moving off pfSense without re-addressing the cafe

The physical part is easy because nothing moves except one box. Your pfSense box already sits between the modem and the cafe switch with two ports. The gateway PC takes the same spot.

1. Pick the PC. It can be the PC that runs HandyCafe Server or a separate one. A separate PC is better: you can restart or update Server and the cafe stays online. An old office PC is enough.
2. Give it two network cards. A PCIe card if there is a free slot, a USB Ethernet adapter if not. Wi-Fi does not count as the cafe side.
3. Write down what pfSense was doing. Before you unplug anything, note its cafe address, any port forwards, fixed addresses and dynamic DNS. You will recreate the forwards on the Port Forwarding tab. Doing it now saves an evening later.
4. Install. In HandyCafe Server open Settings > Gateway and press Install on this PC. On a separate PC use Download for another PC and carry the installer over on a USB stick.
5. Move the cables. Modem into the first card, second card into the cafe switch.
6. Choose the cards. The gateway watches the cafe side for a few seconds. When an old router ran the network, it takes over the address the PCs used as their gateway. PCs, the boot server and printers keep their settings, including the ones set by hand. If the pfSense box is still plugged in on that address the page tells you. Unplug its cafe cable and press Look again.
7. Check DHCP. If a CCBoot server or another device already gives out addresses, the gateway leaves its own DHCP off and names the device it found. Two DHCP servers on one network stop the PCs from starting. In a diskless cafe, read this line twice.
8. Answer the gateway's question. After you press Apply it asks whether things still work. Check that the gateway PC and one cafe PC both reach the internet before you press Yes, keep these settings. If nobody answers, it puts the old settings back after a minute.

Do it after closing. Keep the pfSense box untouched on a shelf for a week. If anything feels off you can put it back the same evening.

The honest limits

Read these before you unplug anything.

The PC has to stay on. Everyone's internet goes through it. When it is off, nobody is online. Sessions, billing and the rest of HandyCafe Server keep running because they do not depend on the gateway. The PCs still lose internet until it is back. A dedicated pfSense box is simply less likely to be switched off by someone who wanted to free a power socket.

The web filter works on names. It stops a customer typing a site into a browser. It also reads the real name when a tool sends a fake one first. Not every VPN or encrypted tunnel can be stopped this way. Treat it as cafe policy, not a wall.

Two lines do not make one fast download. Each device uses one line at a time.

Updates cost a minute or two. Installing an update restarts the gateway and every PC and Wi-Fi guest loses internet for 1 to 2 minutes. The quiet-moment rule makes that rare during busy hours. A release marked required installs by itself after its deadline (72 hours unless the release says otherwise). An hour past that deadline it installs even if the cafe is busy.

Blocking is a payment tool. Somebody who sets their own address by hand can take the address of an allowed device. It stops a customer who has not paid. A determined one walks around it.

There is no VPN server either. If you need one, that alone may be the reason to keep pfSense.

On licensing: the gateway is included in HandyCafe Genesis Pro and also sold on its own. Without a license the basic internet sharing keeps working. Filtering, blocking, speed limits and the Wi-Fi portal switch off. Nobody loses connectivity.

So, keep it or replace it?

If someone in your business understands the pfSense box and you need what it does beyond a cafe, keep it. It is a good router.

If the box is a black hole that nobody dares to open, replace it. Your cafe software already knows which PC is PC 14. A router that uses the same names and lets a cashier undo a mistake gets used. A long package list nobody configures does not. The guest Wi-Fi side has its own write-up in hotspot software for guest Wi-Fi. If you are choosing the cafe software itself at the same time, start with how to choose internet cafe software.

The Gateway docs walk through the install step by step, including the two cards and the cabling.