Jelloustoun-carstvo Kojota Here
Below is a short content piece based on that theme: In the vast, geothermally alive landscape of Yellowstone National Park, one predator thrives not by brute force, but by wit, adaptability, and endurance: the coyote ( Canis latrans ). While wolves and bears often steal the spotlight, it is the coyote that truly rules this wild realm—making Yellowstone a carstvo kojota , a kingdom of the coyote. A Master of All Habitats From the Lamar Valley’s rolling grasslands to the dense lodgepole pine forests and the high plateaus, coyotes have claimed every corner of Yellowstone. Unlike their larger relatives, the wolves, coyotes do not require vast ungulate herds. Instead, they hunt in pairs or small family groups, preying on voles, mice, ground squirrels, and rabbits. In winter, they scavenge bison and elk carcasses left by wolves or the harsh elements, proving that in this kingdom, cunning often outranks strength. The Coyote’s Role in the Ecosystem As a mesopredator (mid-level predator), the coyote plays a crucial balancing act. They control rodent populations, compete with foxes and badgers, and sometimes hunt in loose association with badgers to flush out burrowing prey. Their howls—a mix of yips, barks, and long rising notes—are the true soundtrack of Yellowstone’s nights. When wolves were reintroduced in 1995, coyote numbers briefly dropped, but their intelligence allowed them to adapt, shift territories, and continue thriving. Watching Coyotes in Yellowstone For visitors, coyotes are among the most visible large mammals in the park. Look for them at dawn and dusk along roadsides, in meadows, or near rivers. Remember: they are wild and opportunistic. Never feed them, and keep a safe distance (at least 25 yards / 23 meters). A coyote stopping to watch you from a ridgeline is not a pet—it is the quiet monarch of this volcanic land. Symbol of Resilience The coyote has long been a trickster figure in Native American stories—clever, resilient, and sometimes foolish. In Yellowstone, that trickster energy is real. While grizzlies hibernate and wolves run in structured packs, the coyote simply endures , turning every challenge into an advantage. That is why, beneath the steaming geysers and beside the thundering waterfalls, this truly is the Jelloustoun-carstvo kojota —the Yellowstone Kingdom of the Coyote. Would you like this translated into a specific Slavic language (e.g., Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian), or turned into a video script, social media post, or educational handout?
I notice the phrase “Jelloustoun-carstvo kojota” appears to be a mix of languages and terms. “Jelloustoun” likely refers to (possibly a Slavic rendering), “carstvo” means “kingdom” or “realm” in several Slavic languages (e.g., Russian, Serbian, Bulgarian), and “kojota” means “coyote.” So the phrase roughly translates to “Yellowstone, kingdom of the coyote.” Jelloustoun-carstvo kojota
This article is a work in progress and will continue to receive ongoing updates and improvements. It’s essentially a collection of notes being assembled. I hope it’s useful to those interested in getting the most out of pfSense.
pfSense has been pure joy learning and configuring for the for past 2 months. It’s protecting all my Linux stuff, and FreeBSD is a close neighbor to Linux.
I plan on comparing OPNsense next. Stay tuned!
Update: June 13th 2025
Diagnostics > Packet Capture
I kept running into a problem where the NordVPN app on my phone refused to connect whenever I was on VLAN 1, the main Wi-Fi SSID/network. Auto-connect spun forever, and a manual tap on Connect did the same.
Rather than guess which rule was guilty or missing, I turned to Diagnostics > Packet Capture in pfSense.
1 — Set up a focused capture
Set the following:
192.168.1.105(my iPhone’s IP address)2 — Stop after 5-10 seconds
That short window is enough to grab the initial handshake. Hit Stop and view or download the capture.
3 — Spot the blocked flow
Opening the file in Wireshark or in this case just scrolling through the plain-text dump showed repeats like:
UDP 51820 is NordLynx/WireGuard’s default port. Every packet was leaving, none were returning. A clear sign the firewall was dropping them.
4 — Create an allow rule
On VLAN 1 I added one outbound pass rule:
The moment the rule went live, NordVPN connected instantly.
Packet Capture is often treated as a heavy-weight troubleshooting tool, but it’s perfect for quick wins like this: isolate one device, capture a short burst, and let the traffic itself tell you which port or host is being blocked.
Update: June 15th 2025
Keeping Suricata lean on a lightly-used secondary WAN
When you bind Suricata to a WAN that only has one or two forwarded ports, loading the full rule corpus is overkill. All unsolicited traffic is already dropped by pfSense’s default WAN policy (and pfBlockerNG also does a sweep at the IP layer), so Suricata’s job is simply to watch the flows you intentionally allow.
That means you enable only the categories that can realistically match those ports, and nothing else.
Here’s what that looks like on my backup interface (
WAN2):The ticked boxes in the screenshot boil down to two small groups:
app-layer-events,decoder-events,http-events,http2-events, andstream-events. These Suricata needs to parse HTTP/S traffic cleanly.emerging-botcc.portgrouped,emerging-botcc,emerging-current_events,emerging-exploit,emerging-exploit_kit,emerging-info,emerging-ja3,emerging-malware,emerging-misc,emerging-threatview_CS_c2,emerging-web_server, andemerging-web_specific_apps.Everything else—mail, VoIP, SCADA, games, shell-code heuristics, and the heavier protocol families, stays unchecked.
The result is a ruleset that compiles in seconds, uses a fraction of the RAM, and only fires when something interesting reaches the ports I’ve purposefully exposed (but restricted by alias list of IPs).
That’s this keeps the fail-over WAN monitoring useful without drowning in alerts or wasting CPU by overlapping with pfSense default blocks.
Update: June 18th 2025
I added a new pfSense package called Status Traffic Totals:
Update: October 7th 2025
Upgraded to pfSense 2.8.1:
Fantastic article @hydn !
Over the years, the RFC 1918 (private addressing) egress configuration had me confused. I think part of the problem is that my ISP likes to send me a modem one year and a combo modem/router the next year…making this setting interesting.
I see that Netgate has finally published a good explanation and guidance for RFC 1918 egress filtering:
I did not notice that addition, thanks for sharing!