The Book of Pf : A No-Nonsense Guide to the Openbsd Firewall (Paperback)

A solid understanding of the BSD Packet Filter (PF) subsystem is a necessity for any network administrator working in a BSD environment. This current, no-nonsense guidebook shows how to harness the power of PF to confidently build the high-performance, low-maintenance network one needs. OpenBSD's stateful packet filter, PF, offers an amazing feature set and support across the major BSD platforms. Like most firewall software though, unlocking PF's full potential takes a good teacher.Peter N.M. Hansteen's PF website and conference tutorials have helped thousands of users build the networks they need using PF. "The Book of PF" is the product of Hansteen's knowledge and experience, teaching good practices as well as bare facts and software options. Throughout the book, Hansteen emphasizes the importance of staying in control by having a written network specification, using macros to make rule sets more readable, and performing rigid testing when loading in new rules. Today's system administrators face increasing challenges in the quest for network quality, and "The Book of PF" can help by demystifying the tools of modern *BSD network defense. But, perhaps more importantly, because we know you like to tinker, "The Book of PF" tackles a broad range of topics that will stimulate your mind and pad your resume, including how to: Create rule sets for all kinds of network traffic, whether it is crossing a simple home LAN, hiding behind NAT, traversing DMZs, or spanning bridgesUse PF to create a wireless access point, and lock it down tight with authpf and special access restrictionsMaximize availability by using redirection rules for load balancing and CARP for failoverUse tables for proactive defense against would-be attackers and spammersSet up queues and traffic shaping with ALTQ, so your network stays responsiveMaster your logs with monitoring and visualization, because you can never be too paranoid "The Book of PF" is written for BSD enthusiasts and network admins at any level of expertise. With more and more services placing high demands on bandwidth and increasing hostility coming from the Internet at-large, you can never be too skilled with PF.

A solid understanding of OpenBSD's PF subsystem is a necessity for any network administrator working in a *BSD environment. The Book of PF is a current, no-nonsense guidebook to harnessing the power of PF. Its contents include coverage of NAT (network address translation), wireless networking, spam fighting, traffic shaping, failover provisioning, and logging. Written for anyone who has felt lost in PF's manual pages or baffled by its massive feature set, author Peter Hansteen helps readers confidently build the high-performance, low maintenance network they need.