Customer Rating:  
Summary: Well written, but light in much of its coverage
Comment: Hansteen has put together a mostly well written, OS-independent guide to PF. He states he "made a conscious decision early on to introduce you to its methods via interesting and useful configurations, rather than make this book the complete reference", and I feel this book mostly accomplishes that goal. He points to the man pages as the complete reference, though I disagree on that to some extent, as they lack detailed coverage and practical usage examples in some areas.
There is no introductory coverage of any of the BSDs, which is fine for the scope of the book and those topics are already well covered elsewhere, but don't expect to pick this up and get anywhere with it if you have no prior BSD experience. You'll first need to seek resources on your BSD of choice and have a decent understanding of the OS. Basic networking knowledge is also a prerequisite.
There are some areas that are covered very minimally, to the extent that without seeking additional material, you will likely have difficulty with your implementation unless it is very basic. I agree with most of the complaints noted in Betjlich's review. Given the stated scope of the book, I'm not quite as critical. I do think the stated scope is too limited though.
This book is adequate if you want to get up and running with a basic configuration. Anything more complex will leave you seeking additional resources.
I think this is a worthwhile read if you want to setup a PF firewall, and understand the limits of a book that comes in at 134 pages excluding the appendices. The second edition could be much better though.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A very accessible book on OpenBSD's PF firewall
Comment: If you're looking for information about the OpenBSD packet filter program "pf", you may have noticed a gaping hole on bookstore shelves. Two books that I have read on pf are "Building Firewalls with OpenBSD and PF, 2nd Edition" by Jacek Artymiak and the No Starch Press title, "The Book of PF", by Peter N.M. Hansteen.
"The Book of PF" is by far the easier of the two books to digest and will help you get up to speed very quickly. It's a short book, weighing in at 145 pages. The example rule sets are simple to follow and very thoroughly documented.
Hansteen helps you navigate through pf's basic configuration and then takes you through more advanced topics like wireless networks and how to deal with 'bigger or trickier networks'. There is also a treatment of OpenBSD's spamd program, designed to help you combat spam on your network.
You'll find a chapter on Alternate Queuing (ALTQ) and Common Address Redundancy Protocol (CARP). ALTQ provides a way to shape the traffic on your network and was integrated into pf for the OpenBSD 3.3 release. CARP was added to OpenBSD in release 3.5 to address the issue of high availability and uninterrupted service.
A chapter covering Logging, Monitoring, and Statistics helps bring it all together for the network administrator. Hansteen closes out the text with a chapter titled "Getting Your Setup Just Right" that provides a last-minute review of some of the most important configuration options.
If you're interested in "The Book of PF", most likely you're already familiar with OpenBSD - one of the most secure operating systems available today. If you're ready to enhance OpenBSD's default security, pick up a copy of this book and spend some time with the pf program.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Defacto Book on OpenBSD firewalls
Comment: This book is great for all types of OpenBSD users. If you just want a to build a home router with better performance and more control, then this book is all you'll need. If you're looking to build an enterprise load balancer, this book is an excellent resource that you'd be hard pressed to live with out.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Beginner Tutorial
Comment: Mr. Hansteen, Did a rather good job of putting this book together. The chapters flowed well and one led into the next in a very logical manner. I especially found useful the sections on Round-robin and setting up wireless (Chapter 4 and 7).
Although I make a business of building firewalls I will be keeping this book close at hand. Sadly I only gave 3 stars as I felt the editing could have been better I found several errors with the sample scripts and rules and found it lacking with one or two advanced areas for the professionals would have made this a 5 star easy.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Intersting Intro to PF
Comment: My background has and is mainly in Linux. I ordered this book because I had an interest in PF, and I was unable to test most of the examples of this book, due to the lack of an available machine that I could readily install openbsd on.
After reading this book, I would readily give up iptables for PF. I can't count the number of times I've come into a new job where I had to spend several hours deciphering the iptables rules loaded on a particular firewall to ensure I understand what all the rules are intended to do. I do love iptables and the power it provides but I don't believe anyone can claim it's user friendly or even remotely user friendly.
PF is OpenBSD Packet Filter. It differs from essentially every firewall product on the market in that a normal human being with a very rudimentary understanding of networking can come in, and look at the configuration files and be able to understand what is going on.
This particular book is by no means that comprehensive, nor is it a HOWTO, as the author states in the introduction. It does give a very brief introduction into some of the capabilities of PF, which includes: Setting up a firewall, Natting, Wireless networks, Queuing, Logging and Analyzing data traffic as well as a brief few pages on preventing brute force attacks and spam bot attacks.
For a curious audience that would like to learn more about the PF, it is an ideal book. If you expect to learn about the minute details and intricacies of PF, this isn't the book you want to get.
I enjoyed reading this book, and once again have an itch to learn more about OpenBSD, if I can tear myself away from gentoo long enough to see if I can get used to the various differences and intricacies that always tend to drive me up the wall whenever changing distributions and or operating systems. (To avoid flame wars, I am by no means claiming that OpenBSD or any BSD derivative is a linux distro).
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