Most of the features described come from the fact that FreeBSD ships with OpenBSD's PF (among others). Why would you build it pick FreeBSD considering their PF version is <i>very</i> outdated ?<p>I think going with an OpenBSD base would make more sense for a 'routing platform' as OpenBSD ships with various routing daemons and other network daemons that fit the description better (isakmpd/iked for IPsec with IKE/IKEv2, npppd for L2TP based tunnels ...). Obviously, you can install and use OpenVPN, pretty much any DNS implementation of your choosing to provide additional features. You also get a bunch of security features to mitigate attacks.[1]
Most of them are enabled by default too, contrary to FreeBSD [2](though I have not checked if OPNsense enables them -- it makes sense to enable them, even more so on the network gateway)<p>AFAIK, FreeBSD has better MP support than OpenBSD (though that is a work in progress), and more actively developed wireless stack. Are there any other motivations for using FreeBSD ?<p>[1] <a href="http://www.openbsd.org/papers/ru13-deraadt/" rel="nofollow">http://www.openbsd.org/papers/ru13-deraadt/</a><p>[2] <a href="http://networkfilter.blogspot.fr/2014/12/security-openbsd-vs-freebsd.html" rel="nofollow">http://networkfilter.blogspot.fr/2014/12/security-openbsd-vs...</a>
They've beaten pfSense to a release on FreeBSD 10, have modernized the web interface (still PHP though), and will hopefully work on tightening up security while simultaneously cooperating better with their upstream BSDs.<p>I wish them the best.