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Our secure networking solutions
pfSense® Plus and TNSR® solutions connect and protect homes, businesses in every vertical, K-12 and university educational institutions, local, state, federal government agencies and service providers all over the world.
The company was formed in 2004, has over 75 employees residing on four continents, and is headquartered in Austin, Texas.
Our Mission and Vision
Our mission is to make it fast, safe, and cost-effective to connect to the digital world. Our vision is that secure networking should be a right for all, not a privilege for a few.
This is why we contribute significant technical expertise and financial resources to numerous open-source software projects, including Clixon, Data Plane Developer Kit (DPDK), the Fast Data Project (FD.io) and its flagship technology Vector Packet Processing (VPP), FreeBSD, Free Range Routing, Linux, strongSwan, and the pfSense Project.
Our Value
Secure networking is a vital and competitive space, with ever evolving software and hardware technology. Our value lies in consistent and impactful open-source software contribution, open-source software productization, and reliable, robust secure networking appliance design, manufacturing, delivery and support. Our open source software roots and intimate knowledge of hardware design enable us to provide enterprise-caliber solutions at home and small business price points.
Our Story
2004: Netgate is Founded
Bored to tears out in Hawaii (well, not really) Jim and Jamie Thompson founded Rubicon Communications, LLC (dba Netgate) with their own seed money (a whopping $1,000). The company began making firewalls and wireless access points - which initially shipped with m0n0wall, and later with pfSense. Yes, they've been working with firewalls for a very long time.
Fun facts:
- That was the original logo (which is still cool)
- Netgate is a woman-owned, woman-run business (51%). Trendsetters to the core.
2006: Netgate Shifts from WAPs to Secure Networking Edge Appliances
Jim and Jamie recognized the WAP space was rapidly commoditizing. At the same time, a gap existed in the market between consumer-grade edge firewall / router / VPN solutions (weak performance, restricted feature set, but low price) and enterprise-grade edge solutions (feature rich, worthy performance, but expensive). Netgate pivoted into secure networking edge appliances to fit the gap - excellent features and performance but at attractive price points for discerning consumer and small-to-medium sized business buyers.
2012: Netgate Assumes Sponsorship of pfSense® Project
In 2012, two things changed. First, the founders decided to move back to Austin, Texas (no beach, but great music, coffee shops, and tacos). Second, it became clear the pfSense software project needed a lot of work to survive and thrive. So Netgate took over leadership of the pfSense Project, began contributing heavily to the code, and footing the bill to compile, test, package, distribute, and provide support to users around the world ever since.
2018: Netgate Launches TNSR software
While pfSense software had become the world’s leading open source secure networking software solution - with a user base that had grown rapidly from less than 100,000 software downloads through 2012 to over 1.5 million software downloads through 2018 - it became clear that new network edge performance, feature and manageability needs were emerging - especially for larger organizations and service providers. To address significantly faster router and IPsec needs for network edge and cloud deployments, Netgate began an internal project in late 2014, code named "Pennybacker" (a famous bridge in Austin), which ultimately became TNSR - an entirely new and different product based on Linux and Vector Packet Processing (VPP).
2021: Netgate launches pfSense Plus software
The latest chapter in the company's evolution is the introduction of pfSense Plus software. pfSense Plus will allow Netgate to deliver additional value to its customers, above and beyond its ongoing contribution to the pfSense project.
