The Book of PF: A No-Nonsense Guide to the OpenBSD Firewall

by Peter N.M. Hansteen

OpenBSD's stateful packet filter, PF, is the heart of the OpenBSD firewall. With more and more services placing high demands on bandwidth and an increasingly hostile Internet environment, no sysadmin can afford to be without PF expertise.

The third edition of The Book of PF covers the most up-to-date developments in PF, including new content on IPv6, dual stack configurations, the "queues and priorities" traffic-shaping system, NAT and redirection, wireless networking, spam fighting, failover provision ing, logging, and more.

You'll also learn how to:


Create rule sets for all kinds of network traffic, whether crossing a simple LAN, hiding behind NAT, traversing DMZs, or spanning bridges or wider networks
Set up wireless networks with access points, and lock them down using authpf and special access restrictions
Maximize flexibility and service availability via CARP, relayd, and redirection
Build adaptive firewalls to proactively defend against attackers and spammers
Harness OpenBSD's latest traffic-shaping system to keep your network responsive, and convert your existing ALTQ configurations to the new system
Stay in control of your traffic with monitoring and visualization tools (including NetFlow)
The Book of PF is the essential guide to building a secure network with PF. With a little effort and this book, you'll be well prepared to unlock PF's full potential.

Genres: Nonfiction, Technical, Technology, Reference, Ebooks, Computers

221 pages, Paperback

First published January 11, 2007

Reviews

[Jurvis]

This was a good book to read as I design my first multi-site, multi-hundred host network. I'll refer back to it often as I fine tune my pf.conf.
The author touches on many things a network admin can do with *bsd+pf, some of which I was familiar with, and a plenty of new features that'll be fun to incorporate in my network over the years. While this book feels like a big step beyond the PF FAQ, you'll still need to delve into the man pages frequently to do anything that isn't trivial (and then you'll have to google for examples to explain the terse man pages).
He insists that this book isn't a glorified PF HOWTO, but too often I was made to accept unsubstantiated motherly best practices instead of well-reasoned theory. Which is too bad, because as a glorified HOWTO, he glazes over too many essential fine points. I'm happier if I think of it more as a primer/survey of the topic.

[Rabid Reader]

Good resource for large scale enterprise deployments of pfSense. Complete overkill and challenging for a home or SOHO deployment. I wound up using pfSense Community Edition with a GUI configuration interface, even though I prefer the command line for almost everything else. By utilizing the GUI, I could get better explanations of setup configurations. There was no mention in this book about pfBlockerNG plugin configuration, one of the most handy add-ons I found for pfSense.

What I'd love to find is a straightforward book for setting up pfSense in a home or home office with secure options and managing parental controls of kid's devices. Something that doesn't assume that everyone is a IT Network Guru. This book is well suited for these Gurus, but not for my needs.

[DeadTrees]

Peter N.M. Hansteen is the authority on pf. Read the latest edition of this book, maybe read some of his articles, and set up your network!

To the newcomers, don't confuse this with pf from the FreeBSD world. This is specifically for OpenBSD.

[Xesc]

A No-Nonsense guide to the OpenBSD firewall, is my new geeky book. It took 2 months to arrive, but it is finally here! Yuppie! :)

[Derik]

Clear and full of useful examples. A must for any network admin. I thought it might only be a book about PF tool, but it is also a book about understanding networks.

[Guillermo García Rojas C.]

Fantastic book. All you need to master PF.