Some familiarity with Linux and/or BSD would be helpful, as well as access to a computer that is capable of running pfSense (any modern PC should do). The specifications for such a PC will be discussed in detail in the section regarding hardware sizing guidelines, but in brief, you will need a PC with a 64-bit, AES-NI-capable processor, 1 GB of RAM, and 1 GB of storage.

To get along with the book, you can find detailed technical requirement at the beginning of each chapter.

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "There is a packet with a source address of 192.168.2.1"

A block of code is set as follows:

html, body, #map {
 height: 100%; 
 margin: 0;
 padding: 0
}

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

ping: unknown host google.com

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. Here is an example: "To begin, navigate to Firewall | Rules."