Network Administration with FreeBSD 7

In Detail

This book is a guide to FreeBSD for network administrators; therefore it does not cover basic installation and configuration of FreeBSD, but is about using FreeBSD to build, secure, and maintain networks.

After introducing the basic tools for monitoring the performance and security of the system the book moves on to cover using jails, FreeBSD virtual environments, to virtually run multiple instances of FreeBSD on the same hardware. Then it shows how to overcome the different bottlenecks that you may meet depending on the services you are running by tweaking different parameters to maintain a high performance from your FreeBSD server. Next it covers using the ifconfig utility to configure interfaces with different layer protocols and about connectivity testing and debugging tools. After covering using User PPP or Kernel PPP for Point-to-Point Protocol network configuration it explains basic IP forwarding in FreeBSD and the use of the built-in routing daemons, routed and route6d, which support RIPv1, RIPv2, RIPng, and RDISC. Next it covers the OpenOSPFD and OpenBGPD daemons that you can install to run OSPF and BGP on your host. Then it covers setup and configuration of IPFW and PF, and finally looks at some important internet services and how to set them up on your FreeBSD server.

The book is a guide to Network admins who are interested in extracting full potential of FreeBSD. Security, one of everlasting concerns in the IT industry, can be tackled very effectively in FreeBSD. How do you do it? Read the book and find out. You can then move on to learn intricacies of FreeBSD. Just tweak a few parameters to make the network suit your environment.

Approach

This book first covers the basics on each topic clearly and then gives examples, so that you understand the topic clearly and can work on it independently after you have worked through the book.

Who this book is for

This book is for Network Administrators who would like to work with FreeBSD and are looking for skills beyond installation and configuration of FreeBSD.