Hello,
I’m use pfsense some years and want to switch to ipfire. I try now to enter all the rules from pfsense in ipfire 2.29. Now I have a question, I read always iptables - but on debian, nftables is standard a long time. I have found this thread from 2022:
I’m a little apprehensive about setting everything up again now, only to have to do it all over again in a few months when ipfire with nftables comes out.
Is there any news about nftables in ipfire?
Hello Bernd,
yes, IPFire is using iptables to push firewall rules into the kernel. That is however only the interface. Inside the kernel, packets will be handled by the same code and therefore it does not matter how the rules have been created.
Throughput will be the same, features are almost the same (we are at least not missing anything right now).
OK, I’d like to give Ipfire a chance (and support a German company rather than a somewhat strange American one). Thank you!
nft, also known as nftables is just another front end that is implemented for controlling the same kernel firewall. There are distributions that have both front ends, but its always recommended to use one type of firewall control (nftables, iptables) but not a combination as its easy to make mistakes and create contradicting rules.
The major difference is with NFtables you can manage ipv6 stack at the same time with the same rule set as the ipV4 stack where in a pure iptables install you implement iptables rules for IPv4 and ip6tables for IPv6. Other differences are pointed out here:
Here is a link to the iptables Pocket reference. I suggest purchasing a physical copy, but this might help you understand iptables control method of the Kernel Linux firewall.
To complete