Babak Farrokhi, the author of this book, has an extensive background related to UNIX operating systems. He has been a network engineer in the IT industry for more than 12 years. Since 1997, he has used FreeBSD on a daily basis. He has experience in system administration and networking (TCP/IP) on UNIX-like operating systems, including FreeBSD and Solaris.

The book seems to target an audience of network administrators that have a deep interest in (or are required to know) robust and solid FreeBSD system administration. The book covers building a system/server that runs on FreeBSD from scratch, optimizing the OS to gain the most performance, and most importantly, how to maintain the heightened overall security of the system.

At first, glance the book looks like a printed manual. Nobody should expect to read this 280 page guide in a day or two. Granted, it’s possible, but I’d advocate skimming through the book first to gain a sense of what it’s about and which topics are covered in great detail. Then read it again while working on a FreeBSD OS to practice the knowledge learned.

The listed cover price of the book is US$39.99, UK£24.99, and EU€28.99. However, do yourself a favor and try to look around for certain discounts that are available from specific bookstores. For example, at the time of this writing, there’s a 10 percent discount if you order a copy directly from PACKT Publishing. This means you can get it at £22.49, $35.99, and €27.89. Amazon also offers this ten percent discount.

The purpose of this review is to present the main qualities of the book while summarizing each chapter as briefly as possible. After these distillations, we can go over a few key points regarding the book. In the end, you can expect to find out my subjective opinion and whether or not I’d recommend this book.