pfSense is up and running on my server and I'm connected to the internet typing this on that service. The setup is quite easy, once you know what to, and what not to, change in the setup. I had this installed once before and for some reason, I had no internet connection. So I deleted the vm with pfsense and I created a new one. I have since setup my lan and wan ports (only one lan and one wan which means I have two free ports IF I ever need them). and connected it up to my 48 port switch.
So for those that may want to do this, it's actually quite easy. First, get a stand alone computer that you are not using anymore. Have an old celeron computer or an old laptop? PERFECT! Go to pfSense's website and download the ISO, but it to disk or flash drive and install it on the computer. Any slow computer will work. Most of the processing on a router is done on the NIC and the CPU is only there to route thing to the NIC. If you have 2GB of RAM, you are golden. Now, you are definitely going to want to use an Intel bases NIC on this. That means, in some cases, the onboard NIC on your old computer is likely not going to work properly. IF, it is an Intel NIC, then you can use it and just put a single port NIC in the PCIe slot and you are golden. There is a way to do a vlan setup where you can use one port for your wan and lan, but it's not such a great idea.
Once you have it installed, you will run through a wizard and you will be online. Yes, it is that simple. Of course you can go in and setup different firewall rules, setup more ports on different networks for your IOT's (Internet Of Things) such as your Alexa, your wifi connected toaster, whatever, that you DON'T want to have access to the devices on your network.
Quite honestly, it can do more than I will EVER know how to do and I'm happy just having it running and having a way more secure network than I had before.
My setup is, I have a fiber connection running into my house and into a fiber to ethernet converter. The Cat6e cable coming out of the converter is then plugged into the WAN port that I assigned on the pfSense NIC. From there, I have a line coming out of the LAN port on the pfSense NIC going into a port on my 48 Port Brocade POE switch and EVERYTHING I own is plugged into that switch. I then disabled the DHCP server on my old router (Linksys WRT3200ACM) and I have it setup as a stand alone wireless access point. A very expensive access point at that lol. Well, you could get into Ubiquity Systems which get REALLY expensive, but yea, not for me lmao.
so as simple as that, I have a router on my Unraid server that is now controlling ALL of my network traffic. And yes, I did a speed test and with only two cores, on a GIGABIT internet line, it is only using 70% of the CPU useage. Oh, and I only have 3GB of RAM allocated to the router, and it is sitting at 7% usage lol. VERY lightweight.