March 2026
Intermediate to advanced
264 pages
7h 30m
English
Overview
The OpenBSD packet filter, PF, is central to the OpenBSD and FreeBSD network toolbox. With more services placing high demands on bandwidth and an increasingly hostile Internet environment, no sysadmin can afford to be without PF expertise.
The fourth 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 provisioning, logging, and more.
You’ll also learn how to:
- Create rulesets for all kinds of network traffic, IPv4 and IPv6 both, 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, or use ALTQ and Dummynet configurations on FreeBSD to full effect
- 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.
Covers OpenBSD 7.x, FreeBSD 14.x, and NetBSD 10.x
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access
More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.