The Book of PF

Tables Make Your Life Easier

By this time you may be thinking that this system for creating rules gets awfully static and rigid. There will, after all, be some kinds of data that are relevant to filtering and redirection at a given time but do not deserve to be put into a configuration file! Quite right, and PF offers mechanisms for handling these situations, as well.

Tables are one such feature, useful as lists of IP addresses that can be manipulated without reloading the entire rule set and also when fast lookups are desirable.

Table names are always enclosed in angle brackets (< and >), like this:

table <clients> persist { 192.168.2.0/24, !192.168.2.5 }

Here the network 192.168.2.0/24 is part of the table with one exception. The address 192.168.2.5 ...