Aliases and virtual IPs

In this section, we will briefly consider two items from the firewall menu: aliases and virtual IPs. Of the two, you are more likely to utilize aliases, so we will look at them first.

Aliases

Aliases allow you to group ports, hosts, or networks into named entities that you can refer to in firewall rules, NAT rules, and in traffic-shaping. Judicious use of aliases will enable you to make changes in IP addresses, ports, and/or networks without making multiple configuration changes.

You cannot use aliases everywhere within the pfSense web GUI, but you will always know when you can: an edit box that is alias-friendly will have a red background. If you start to type the alias name into such a box, the autocomplete...