Arno's IPTABLES Firewall Script For Linux

Arno's IPTABLES firewall script was initially written because I needed to protect my single-homed Linux machine at work. I wrote it at the time I couldn't find any script that really satisfied my needs except for one that was written by a guy called 'Seven'.

I helped him for several months with the work on his script by suppling patches, reporting bugs etc. In this period I was fortunately also able to master scripting for iptables myself because soon Seven discontinued his work, I never got to even talk to the guy ever again. At that point I decided to continue his work, or actually I started my own branch based on his script.

In the summer of 2002 I finally got an ADSL connection at home. Initially I used the iptables firewall that came with the great ADSL4LINUX-package (http://www.adsl4linux.nl). But it didn't take me long to come to the conclusion that their iptables firewall lacked important features like port-forwarding and flexbility with "trusted hosts" etc.

I also didn't like the fact that I had to use a different firewall for my home machine and the machine at work. This made me decide to use some of the ADSL4LINUX knowledge to implement ADSL support.

By now (about 1 year later as of writing) there are only few remnants left of Seven's original script and many, many, many improvements were applied. One major improvement is the ADSL and NAT support (Check the 'features' page with the specifiations of my firewall). For version 2 (alpha) I plan to completely rewrite to script to make it more flexible and to increase the usability for others.