PNS, in cooperation with the MS and MC software components, is designed to be fully configurable from the graphical user interface of MC. Though this graphical administration is definitely the preferred method of management, it is possible to manually accomplish all the management and configuration tasks using a simple, character–based terminal console connection. In addition, the console–based administration provides some useful tools for troubleshooting scenarios that are not available through MC.

Local firewall administration, in this sense, does not necessarily refer to administration that takes place physically at the firewall machine using its local console and keyboard, but it also refers to setups where the character terminal of the firewall is reached through a secure network connection using SSH. The described administration is local in the sense that the configuration files are directly manipulated on the firewall machine, and not through the MS database.