9.5. Know Your Network, Stay in Control

The recurring theme in this book has been how PF and related tools make it relatively easy for you, as the network administrator, to take control of your network and make it behave the way you want it to. In other words, this book is about building the network you need.

Running a network can be fun, and I hope you have enjoyed this tour of what I consider to be the best tool available. In presenting PF, I made a conscious decision early on to introduce you to its methods and ways of thinking via interesting and useful configurations, rather than make this book the complete reference. The complete PF reference already exists in the man pages, which are updated every six months with the new OpenBSD releases. Following this chapter you will find a list of online and print literature I have found useful, with short comments for each entry, followed by a note on hardware, various kinds of support, and how to interact with the developer and user communities.