Wednesday 12 February 2014

IP Tables

                             Basic iptables Syntax

Firewalls built with Netfilter are built through the iptables firewall administration command.
The iptables command implements the firewall policies that you create and manages the
behavior of the firewall. Netfilter firewalls have three individual tables: filter, NAT, and man-
gle. Within these tables, firewalls are built through chains, with each individual link in the
chain being an individual iptables command.
Within the default filter table there is a chain for input or data coming into the firewall, a
chain for output or data leaving the firewall, a chain for forwarding or data being sent through
the firewall, and other chains including chains named and configured by the user, commonly
(and appropriately) called user-defined chains. The NAT and mangle tables have specialty
chains that will be discussed later. For now, it’s sufficient to know that the filter table is the
default table for implementing a basic firewall, the NAT table is used to provide NAT and
related functions, and the mangle table is used when the packet will be altered by the firewall.
iptables commands are issued with very specific syntax. Many times, the ordering of the
options given to iptables makes the difference between a successful command and a syntax
error. The commands issued to iptables fall through, so a command that allows certain pack-
ets that follows a command that denies those same packets will cause the data to be dropped
by the firewall.
The basic syntax for an iptables command begins with the iptables command itself, followed
by one or more options, a chain, a set of match criteria, and a target or disposition. The layout
of the command largely depends on the action to be performed. Consider this syntax:
iptables <option> <chain> <matching criteria> <target>
In building a firewall, the option is usually -A to append a rule onto the end of the ruleset.
Naturally, there are several options depending on the target and the operation being per-
formed. This chapter covers most of those options.
As previously stated, the chain can be an input chain, an output chain, a forwarding chain, or
a user-defined chain. In addition, the chain might also be a specialty chain contained in the
NAT or mangle tables.

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