pfSense: The Definitive Guide: The Definitive Guide to the pfSense Open Source Firewall and Router Distribution

by Christopher M. Buechler, Jim Pingle, Michael W. Lucas (Foreword)

This Definitive Guide to pfSense book corresponds to pfSense version 1.2.x from 2009. A second book from the same publisher, pfSense Essentials (ISBN 978-1-937516-04-8), is based on version 2.4.4 with features from older and newer versions. The Definitive Guide to pfSense, written by pfSense co-founder Chris Buechler and pfSense consultant Jim Pingle, covers installation and basic configuration through advanced networking and firewalling with the popular open source firewall and router distribution. This book is designed to be a friendly step-by-step guide to common networking and security tasks, plus a thorough reference of pfSense's capabilities. The book covers hardware and system planning, installation and upgrades, backups, firewalling fundamentals, port forwarding and Network Address Translation, bridging, Virtual LANs (VLAN), Multi-WAN, Virtual Private Networks (VPN) using IPsec, PPTP, and OpenVPN, traffic shaping, load balancing, wireless networking and captive portal setups, redundant firewalls and High Availability, system monitoring, logging, traffic analysis, sniffing, packet capturing, troubleshooting, and software package and third-party software installations and upgrades.

Genres: Reference, Computers

489 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2009

Reviews

[Abderrahman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well... it was written by pfSense's co-founder & a pfSense consultant, so obviously they know exactly what they're talking about.

It really helps with the basics, even if you are a beginner. It's more of a manual or a reference, not a book meant to be read page by page.

But, here's the thing. This book came out in 2009, based on pfSense 1.2.3, which is ages ago in the world of software & open source. Now we have pfSense 2.0, which many steps ahead with a lot of functions improved and added. Packages got updated, new ones became standard... etc. So, it's important to update the guide because some parts are no longer valid.

It'd be great if this book found its way into the wiki, it's very organized and detailed that it could become wiki material, and people keep it updated regularly. pfSense's wiki lacks a lot of the good parts mentioned in the book, but seeing how pfSense uses professional support as a way of income maybe that'll be hard.

However, some parts are completely missing! There's nothing about setting up pfSense as a DNS server, or a simple table to explain recommended hardware resources with different configurations, which I think system builders would like to know... for example if they have a 20Mbps connection and want to connect through a VPN, which uses less resources; OpenVPN or IPsec... etc

[Scott W. Vincent · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great introduction to pfSense. I tried to utilize the online documentation and there is some good stuff out there, but this book is much better organized and easier to follow. I had previous experience with setting up access points and routers from Linksys, etc but needed to get up to speed with pfSense for a networking class. This book did it. Between this and the class I'm really liking pfSense and plan to implement it in my home network.

[Khuyen]

dkjd

[Alistair Warner]

I've read what I need from this text. Time to close it down and move onto the next one.