The Book of PF
A No-Nonsense Guide to the OpenBSD Firewall
2nd Edition
Published on 15. November 2010
Book
Paperback/Softback
XX, 190 pages
978-1-59327-274-6 (ISBN)
Description
OpenBSD's stateful packet filter, PF, is the heart of the OpenBSD firewall and a necessity for any admin working in a BSD environment. With a little effort and this book, you'll gain the insight needed to unlock PF's full potential.
This second edition of The Book of PF has been completely updated and revised. Based on Peter N. M. Hansteen's popular PF website and conference tutorials, this no-nonsense guide covers NAT and redirection, wireless networking, spam fighting, failover provisioning, logging, and more. Throughout the book, Hansteen emphasizes the importance of staying in control with a written network specification, keeping rule sets readable using macros, and performing rigid testing when loading new rules.
The Book of PF tackels a broad range of topics that will stimulate your mind and pad your resume, including how to:
- Create rules sets for all kinds of network traffic, whether if's crossing a simple LAN, hiding behind NAT, traversing DMZs, or spanning bridges or wider networks
- Create wireless networks with access points, and lock them down with authpf and special access restrictions
- Maximize flexibility and service availability via CARP, relayd, and redirection
- Create adaptive firewalls to proactively defend against would-be attackers and spammers
- Implement traffic shaping and queues with ALTQ (priq, cbq, or hfsc) to keep your network responsive
- Master your logs with monitoring and visualization tools (including NetFlow)
The Book of PF is for BSD enthusiasts and network administrators at any skill level. With more and more services placing high demands on bandwidth and an increasingly hostile Internet environment, you can't afford to be without PF expertise.
This second edition of The Book of PF has been completely updated and revised. Based on Peter N. M. Hansteen's popular PF website and conference tutorials, this no-nonsense guide covers NAT and redirection, wireless networking, spam fighting, failover provisioning, logging, and more. Throughout the book, Hansteen emphasizes the importance of staying in control with a written network specification, keeping rule sets readable using macros, and performing rigid testing when loading new rules.
The Book of PF tackels a broad range of topics that will stimulate your mind and pad your resume, including how to:
- Create rules sets for all kinds of network traffic, whether if's crossing a simple LAN, hiding behind NAT, traversing DMZs, or spanning bridges or wider networks
- Create wireless networks with access points, and lock them down with authpf and special access restrictions
- Maximize flexibility and service availability via CARP, relayd, and redirection
- Create adaptive firewalls to proactively defend against would-be attackers and spammers
- Implement traffic shaping and queues with ALTQ (priq, cbq, or hfsc) to keep your network responsive
- Master your logs with monitoring and visualization tools (including NetFlow)
The Book of PF is for BSD enthusiasts and network administrators at any skill level. With more and more services placing high demands on bandwidth and an increasingly hostile Internet environment, you can't afford to be without PF expertise.
More details
Edition
2., nd Edition
Language
English
Place of publication
San Francisco
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
BSD system administrators
- Security professionals and students learning network security
Edition type
New edition
Product notice
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 23.5 cm
Width: 17.7 cm
ISBN-13
978-1-59327-274-6 (9781593272746)
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
New editions
Book
03/2014
3rd Edition
No Starch Press
€49.30
Article exhausted; check different version
Previous edition
Book
01/2008
1st Edition
No Starch Press
€27.00
Withdrawn from sale
Person
Peter N. M. Hansteen is a consultant, writer, and sysadmin based in Bergen, Norway. A longtime Freenix advocate, Hansteen is a frequent lecturer on OpenBSD and FreeBSD topics, an occasional contributor to BSD Magazine, and the author of an often-slashdotted blog (http-//bsdly.blogspot.com/). Hansteen was a participant in the original RFC 1149 implementation team. The Book of PF is an expanded follow-up to his very popular online PF tutorial (http-//home.nuug.no/-peter/pf/).
Content
PRAISE FOR THE FIRST EDITION OF THE BOOK OF PF; Dedication; Foreword; Acknowledgments; Introduction; This Is Not a HOWTO; What This Book Covers; Chapter 1: Building the Network You Need; 1.1 Your Network: High Performance, Low Maintenance, and Secure; 1.2 Where the Packet Filter Fits In; 1.3 The Rise of PF; 1.4 If You Came from Elsewhere; 1.5 A Little Encouragement: A PF Haiku; Chapter 2: PF Configuration Basics; 2.1 The First Step: Enabling PF; 2.2 A Simple PF Rule Set: A Single, Stand-Alone Machine; 2.3 Slightly Stricter: Using Lists and Macros for Readability; 2.4 Displaying Information About Your System; 2.5 Looking Ahead; Chapter 3: Into the Real World; 3.1 A Simple Gateway; 3.2 That Sad Old FTP Thing; 3.3 Making Your Network Troubleshooting Friendly; 3.4 Tables Make Your Life Easier; Chapter 4: Wireless Networks Made Easy; 4.1 A Little IEEE 802.11 Background; 4.2 Setting Up a Simple Wireless Network; 4.3 Guarding Your Wireless Network with authpf; Chapter 5: Bigger or Trickier Networks; 5.1 A Web Server and Mail Server on the Inside--Routable Addresses; 5.2 A Web Server and Mail Server on the Inside--the NAT Version; 5.3 Filtering on Interface Groups; 5.4 The Power of Tags; 5.5 The Bridging Firewall; 5.6 Handling Nonroutable Addresses from Elsewhere; Chapter 6: Turning the Tables for Proactive Defense; 6.1 Turning Away the Brutes; 6.2 Giving Spammers a Hard Time with spamd; 6.3 Spam-Fighting Tips; Chapter 7: Queues, Shaping, and Redundancy; 7.1 Directing Traffic with ALTQ; 7.2 Setting Up Queues; 7.3 Redundancy and Failover: CARP and pfsync; Chapter 8: Logging, Monitoring, and Statistics; 8.1 PF Logs: The Basics; 8.2 Additional Tools for PF Logs and Statistics; 8.3 Log Data as the Basis for Effective Debugging; Chapter 9: Getting Your Setup Just Right; 9.1 Things You Can Tweak and What You Probably Should Leave Alone; 9.2 Cleaning Up Your Traffic; 9.3 Testing Your Setup; 9.4 Debugging Your Rule Set; 9.5 Know Your Network and Stay in Control; Resources; General Networking and BSD Resources on the Internet; Sample Configurations and Related Musings; PF on Other BSD Systems; BSD and Networking Books; Wireless Networking Resources; spamd and Greylisting-Related Resources; Book-Related Web Resources; Buy OpenBSD CDs and Donate!; A Note on Hardware Support; Getting the Right Hardware; Issues Facing Hardware Support Developers; How to Help the Hardware Support Efforts; Colophon; Updates;