One platform for every operator
Whether you run dozens of client networks, a consolidated enterprise estate, a homelab rack, or a teaching lab, FreeSDN fits the way you work, self-hosted, vendor-neutral, and free of per-device fees.
Managed Service Providers
Operate dozens of client networks from one pane of glass with strict tenant isolation and per-technician site grants.
The problem an MSP has is not monitoring, it is context switching. Every client runs a different stack, each with its own controller, its own login and its own idea of what a site is. A technician handling four tickets touches four portals, and the only place the whole estate exists at once is in somebody's head.
FreeSDN gives every client an organization, every location a site, and every technician a grant that limits them to the sites they actually work on. Tenant scoping is applied in the application layer and fails closed, so a query that forgets to scope returns nothing rather than everything. Onboarding a new client is an API call, and there are no per-device fees eating the margin on it.
- Multi-tenant by design: organizations → sites → devices
- Role-based access control (5 assignable roles) with per-user site grants
- No per-device fees: margin stays with you
- One typed API to automate onboarding and reporting
Worth knowing: FreeSDN's stated threat model is a single-tenant self-hosted appliance, and multi-organization support is built for one MSP running its own instance rather than for hosting mutually hostile tenants. If you need the latter, run separate instances.
Enterprise IT
Consolidate best-of-breed vendors without lock-in. Self-hosted and air-gappable, with a staged-write safety model for change control.
Enterprise networks end up multi-vendor whether or not anyone planned it. An acquisition brings a different firewall, a building refit brings a different camera line, and the team ends up with five consoles, five permission models and five audit trails that never quite reconcile.
FreeSDN sits in front of what you already own and normalises it. The staged-write model matters more here than anywhere else: a change is recorded and shown before it is applied, applied only behind an explicit confirmation, and written to an audit log that records who did it and to what. That is the shape change control already expects.
- Vendor-neutral: keep the hardware you already own
- Staged writes with double confirmation and audit trail
- Air-gappable, self-hosted: your data never leaves
- OpenAPI-documented for integration and automation
Worth knowing: There is no third-party security certification, no support contract and no SLA. Writes are staged and mock-tested rather than live-validated. Treat it as something to pilot on a non-critical segment first, and read the maturity labels for the specific vendors you care about.
Homelab & Prosumer
Run your whole rack (switches, cameras, PBX, firewall, Proxmox, and NAS) from a single, beautiful dashboard.
A homelab accumulates. A switch, then a firewall, then cameras, then a PBX nobody else in the house asked for, then Proxmox, then a NAS. Each arrives with its own web interface on its own port, and the rack becomes a bookmark folder.
One Compose command brings up the whole controller, and the Lite profile is sized for a single node rather than a cluster. Everything is free, including the tiers, because there is no paid edition to upsell you to. It is also a genuinely good way to learn how this equipment behaves without a vendor lab licence.
- Install in minutes with one Docker Compose command
- Low-footprint Lite profile for a single node
- Cameras, VoIP, compute, and storage in one place
- Free forever, AGPL-3.0, no accounts or cloud
Worth knowing: It is young software. Take backups, and do not point it at anything you cannot afford to have misconfigured while you are still learning what it does.
Education & Labs
A safe, read-aware teaching environment for networking, security, and infrastructure courses across mixed vendor gear.
Teaching networking well needs real equipment, and real equipment in student hands is exactly what an institution cannot risk. The usual compromises are simulators that behave nothing like hardware, or a lab that one confident student can take down for a fortnight.
Read-only access is a first-class role, not an afterthought, so students can explore a live mixed-vendor estate without the ability to change it. When they progress to changes, the staged-write model means an intended change is visible and reviewable before anything reaches a device, which is a teaching opportunity in itself. The plugin SDK gives coursework somewhere real to land.
- Read-only and staged modes for safe student access
- Mixed-vendor labs unified under one controller
- Open source: inspect, fork, and extend freely
- Plugin SDK for custom coursework integrations
Worth knowing: The software is AGPL-3.0, so coursework and modifications are yours to share. Access Control is disabled and cannot yet be enabled, so do not plan a module around door systems.
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