The Linux kernel, since version 2.0, has included the capabilities to act as a firewall. In those days, the kernel module was called ipfwadm and was very simple. With the 2.2 kernel, the firewall module became called ipchains and had greater capabilities than its predecessor. Today, we have IPTables, the firewall module in the kernel since the 2.4 days. IPTables was built to take over ipchains, and includes improvements that now allow it to compete against some of the best commercial products available in the market. This guide will give you some background on IPTables and how to use it to secure your network.
Getting to know some important terminology
IPTables can be used in three main jobs: NAT, Packet Filtering, and Routing.
– NAT stands Network Address Translation, and it is used to allow the use of one public IP address for many computers.
– Packet Filteringstateless firewall and the other is stateful firewall. Stateless firewalls do not have the ability to inspect incoming packets to see if the packet is coming from a known connection originating at your computer. Stateful firewalls have the ability to inspect each packet to see if it’s part of a known connection, and if the packet is not part of a known, established connection then the packet is “dropped” or not allowed to pass through the firewall.
– Routing is used to route various network packets to different ports, which are similar to Airport gates, or different IP addresses depending on what is requested. For example, if you have a web server somewhere in your network that uses port 8080, you can use Linux’s packet routing to route port 80 packets to your server’s port 8080. More on all this this later on.
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Wow, good stuff. I’m getting to understand it a bit at least. Thanks.