Chapter 16: Building a Network Firewall

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Overview

This chapter presents an approach for building a basic but functional network firewall. As with all the case studies presented up until now, the objective of this chapter is not to make you an expert in building firewalls. Indeed, this chapter really only scratches the surface of network security; meddle not in the rules of firewalls, for they are subtle and quick to kill the network! Instead, the purpose is to demonstrate a complete customization of a Linux system.

In other words, the focus of this chapter is not to explain the nuances and subtlety of firewall rules, but rather to demonstrate how the underlying Linux distribution is tweaked in order to support a firewall. (If you want the nitty gritty details on Linux-based firewalls, see Ziegler's excellent book Linux Firewalls, cited in the bibliography at the end of this chapter.) That said, the contents of this chapter should nevertheless provide a solid basis for building your own basic firewall based on Red Hat Linux. After reading this chapter, you'll have seen a third case study, and learned about several software programs and configuration techniques that will help you in setting up a firewall or any other kind of server.

One important thing to note is that this chapter assumes a fair amount of knowledge of TCP/IP networking. You're not expected to be a master of all things Ethernet, but you should at least know the basics; you should know what a host is, what a port is, how the routing table works, and so on. If you don't know this material, parts of this chapter might be inaccessible to you. For a good primer on network-related topics, see Linux Networking HOWTO, cited in the bibliography at the end of this chapter.)



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Tuning and Customizing a Linux System
Tuning and Customizing a Linux System
ISBN: 1893115275
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2002
Pages: 159

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