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Introduction

FreeSDN is a vendor-neutral, self-hosted single pane of glass for physical and virtual infrastructure. One platform manages switches, access points, cameras, phones, firewalls, hypervisors, and observability pipelines - no cloud dependency, no per-device fees, no phone-home telemetry.

What FreeSDN manages

Section titled “What FreeSDN manages”

FreeSDN ships 10 modules. All run on the same stack; each is independently enabled per organization:

Module What it covers
Network Management Switch port management (enable / PoE / cycle), VLAN CRUD + interactive port-VLAN matrix, LAGs, port mirroring, APs / SSIDs, rogue-AP detection, topology, firmware lifecycle, config backup
Video Surveillance Camera CRUD, live stream (RTSP/HLS/MJPEG/fMP4), snapshots, PTZ, recording playback, NVR import, LPR, forensic export + legal hold
VoIP & Telephony Phone provisioning and fleet ops (onboard/migrate/reboot/factory-reset/push-SIP) plus PBX management (extensions, trunks, ring groups, queues, IVR, voicemail, DIDs, CDR)
Firewall Rule CRUD and reorder, NAT, VPN (IPsec / OpenVPN / WireGuard) + stats, IDS/IPS, and gateway orchestration - canonical VLANs, drift detection, multi-controller distribution
Compute / Hypervisor Proxmox VE: clusters, nodes, VMs, LXC containers, snapshots, backups, storage, SDN
Observability Passive SNMP-trap, Syslog (RFC 3164/5424), and NetFlow (v5/v9) collection into TimescaleDB
Configuration Backup Portable config snapshot (.fsdn archive: sites / controllers / devices / users / automation)
AI Assistant Multi-provider LLM agentic assistant (OpenAI, Anthropic, Ollama), 11 tools, 3-layer governance
Access Control Door, credential, cardholder, and schedule CRUD
Storage TrueNAS health rollup (ZFS pools, alerts, disk temps) and staged blob writes

Adapters - 13 vendor drivers

Section titled “Adapters - 13 vendor drivers”

FreeSDN talks to real devices via typed adapters. Maturity varies:

Tier Adapters
Production Omada (gold standard), OPNsense, pfSense, MikroTik (RouterOS v7), Hikvision, Proxmox, UniFi (network)
Beta FreePBX, Grandstream
Preview OpenWrt, TrueNAS (read-only: ZFS pools, alerts, disk temps), ONVIF-compatible cameras

ONVIF is a protocol shim (app/adapters/onvif/, ) used internally by camera adapters as a fallback for generic ONVIF cameras - it is not a standalone vendor adapter and does not appear in any tier row.

Write-capable adapters route all mutations through the staged dual-gate - nothing touches a live device until an operator explicitly applies the change. See Concepts for how this works.

Who is FreeSDN for?

Section titled “Who is FreeSDN for?”
  • MSPs and IT teams running mixed-vendor sites who need a single management plane without locking every site into a single vendor’s cloud.
  • Enterprises with compliance requirements who need self-hosted infrastructure with an auditable, no-surprises codebase.
  • Homelabs and small networks that want Unifi-style UX without the Unifi vendor lock.

FreeSDN’s multi-tenant model (Organizations → Sites → Controllers → Devices) naturally fits MSP use: each customer organization is isolated at the application layer with a 5-tier role hierarchy and per-user site grants.

What is production-ready?

Section titled “What is production-ready?”

The core platform - auth, RBAC, multi-tenancy, the Network module, Hikvision cameras, Firewall / gateway orchestration, Proxmox compute, and Observability - is covered by automated tests and internal review, but no third-party security audit or certification is claimed. The CI suite runs automated checks. FreeSDN is run in production by the small in-house team that builds it, on a real mixed-vendor stack (Omada, Hikvision, Proxmox, OPNsense, and more) - young software, but not a toy. It has not yet been validated across a wide range of outside environments, so evaluate it on its merits for your own deployment.

License

Section titled “License”

FreeSDN core is licensed under AGPL-3.0-only. The freesdn-agent desktop/daemon package is MIT. There are no per-device fees, seat licenses, or usage-based charges. FreeSDN does not phone home or require internet access after installation - it is fully air-gappable.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”

All product names, logos, and brands are property of their respective owners. FreeSDN is an independent project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the vendors it integrates with. See Trademarks.