ipfirewall

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ipfirewall or ipfw is a FreeBSD IP packet filter and traffic accounting facility. Its ruleset logic is similar to many other packet filters except IPFilter. ipfirewall is authored and maintained by FreeBSD volunteer staff members. Its syntax enables use of sophisticated filtering capabilities and thus enables professional users to satisfy advanced requirements. It can either be used as a loadable kernel module or incorporated into the kernel; use as a loadable kernel module where possible is highly recommended. ipfw is the built-in firewall of Mac OS X^[1] and DragonFly BSD. Like FreeBSD, ipfirewall is open source. It is used in many FreeBSD-based firewall products, including m0n0wall and FreeNAS. wipfw is a port of ipfw for Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003.

Mac OS X's ipfirewall tab in the Sharing Preferences Pane (ipfw is supplemented by an application firewall in Mac OS X 10.5 and can no longer be configured through System Preferences), simply titled Firewall.

ipfirewall is composed of these components:

• kernel firewall filter rule processor and its integrated packet accounting facility
• logging facility
• "divert" rule (NAT)
• advanced special purpose facilities
• the dummynet traffic shaper
• "fwd rule" forward facility
• the bridge facility
• ipstealth
• per-packet kernel-wide tagging (set, unset and check 16-bit tags)
• ALTQ-based QoS disciplines
• rule sets for atomic management of multiple rules
• a full-blown stateful engine with connection limiting
• anti-spoofing rules based on routing table
• lookup tables based on Radix trees
• per-rule byte and packet counters
• built-in NAT, Port address translation and LSNAT (load-sharing) facilities (since FreeBSD 7)
• IPv6 support (with several limitations)

[edit] Alternative user interfaces for ipfw

[edit] See also

• ipchains, a Linux-based descendant of ipfw
• netfilter/iptables, a Linux-based descendant of ipchains
• PF (firewall), another widely deployed BSD firewall solution

[edit] References

1. ^ ipfw is the only firewall software in Mac OS X v10.4 and below. Mac OS X v10.5 uses both an application firewall and ipfw. Apple Knowledge Base #HT1810
2. ^ http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/about/media/06.25.04CPD.GLBL.EULA.NIS_NAV_NPF_NGB_NAS2005.pdf
3. ^ http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/about/media/08.23.05cpd.glbl.eula_nis_nav_npf_2006.pdf
4. ^ http://www.symantec.com/norton/macintosh/personal-firewall

[edit] External links

Free software portal

• ipfw section of the FreeBSD Handbook.
• Ipfw-HOWTO
• IPFirewall for Windows
• ipfw(4), ipfw(8), divert(4), altq(4), dummynet(4) – ipfw-related FreeBSD man pages

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