[lug] Personal Server Behind DSL Router

[Ken MacFerrin]

> Are firewalls like shorewall and fwbuilder just high
> level interfaces to iptables and the kernel packet
> filter or are they entirely different beasts?
> 
> I ask because nobody in this thread is mentioning
> iptables which I thought was the defacto linux
> firewall.  And I'm wondering if there is any benefit
> to using one versus the other?

Yes.. both of these are just higher level interfaces to iptables for
linux.  I've not used fwbuilder myself to make a comparison but they
both seem to be mature tools.  Shorewall is a text based tool that you
setup using config files in /etc/shorewall and start/stop via
/etc/init.d/shorewall whereas it appears from a quick glance that
fwbuilder provides a GUI interface that you can use to build a shell
script with a set of iptables rules and then export them over to the
target machines.
-Ken