This HOWTO is about packet filtering. This means deciding whether a packet should be allowed to pass or not. However, Linux being the hacker's playground that it is, you probably want to do more than that.
One problem is that the same tool (``ipchains'') is used to control both masquerading and transparent proxying, although these are notionally separate from packet filtering (the current Linux implementation blurs these together unnaturally, leaving the impression that they are closely related).
Masquerading and proxying are covered by separate HOWTOs, and the auto forwarding and port forwarding features are controlled by separate tools, but since so many people keep asking me about it, I'll include a set of common scenarios and indicate when each one should be applied. The security merits of each setup will not be discussed here.
You can buy off-the-shelf firewalls. An excellent one is WatchGuard's FireBox. It's excellent because I like it, it's secure, it's Linux-based, and because they are funding the maintenance of ipchains as well as the new firewalling code (aimed for 2.3). In short, WatchGuard are paying for me to eat while I work for you. So please consider their stuff.
You run littlecorp.com. You have an internal network, and a single dialup (PPP) connection to the Internet (firewall.littlecorp.com which is 1.2.3.4). You run Ethernet on your local network, and your personal machine is called "myhost".
In this scenario, packets from the private network never traverse the Internet, and vice versa. The IP addresses of the private network should be assigned from the RFC1597 Private Network Allocations (ie. 10.*.*.*, 172.16.*.* or 192.168.*.*).
The only way things ever connect to the Internet is by connecting to the firewall, which is the only machine on both networks, which connects onwards. You run a program (on the firewall) called a proxy to do this (there are proxies for FTP, web access, telnet, RealAudio, Usenet News and other services). See the Firewall HOWTO.
Any services you wish the Internet to access must be on the firewall. (But see Limited Internal Services below).
Example: Allowing web access from private network to the Internet.
Netscape on myhost reads http://slashdot.org.
ie. From slashdot.org's point of view, the connection is made from 1.2.3.4 (firewall's PPP interface) port 1025 to 207.218.152.131 (slashdot.org) port 80. From myhost's point of view, the connection is made from 192.168.1.100 (myhost) port 1050, to 192.168.1.1 (firewall's Ethernet interface) port 8080.
In this scenario, packets from the private network never traverse the Internet, and vice versa. The IP addresses of the private network should be assigned from the RFC1597 Private Network Allocations (ie. 10.*.*.*, 172.16.*.* or 192.168.*.*).
The only way things ever connect to the Internet is by connecting to the firewall, which is the only machine on both networks, which connects onwards. You run a program (on the firewall) called a transparent proxy to do this; the kernel sends outgoing packets to the transparent proxy instead of sending them onwards (ie. it bastardizes routing).
Transparent proxying means that the clients don't need to know there is a proxy involved.
Any services you wish the Internet to access must be on the firewall. (But see Limited Internal Services below).
Example: Allowing web access from private network to the Internet.
Netscape on myhost reads http://slashdot.org.
ie. From slashdot.org's point of view, the connection is made from 1.2.3.4 (firewall's PPP interface) port 1025 to 207.218.152.131 (slashdot.org) port 80. From myhost's point of view, the connection is made from 192.168.1.100 (myhost) port 1050, to 207.218.152.131 (slashdot.org) port 80, but it's actually talking to the transparent proxy.
In this scenario, packets from the private network never traverse the Internet without special treatment, and vice versa. The IP addresses of the private network should be assigned from the RFC1597 Private Network Allocations (ie. 10.*.*.*, 172.16.*.* or 192.168.*.*).
Instead of using a proxy, we use a special kernel facility called "masquerading". Masquerading rewrites packets as they pass through the firewall, so that they always seem to come from the firewall itself. It then rewrites the responses so that they look like they are going to the original recipient.
Masquerading has separate modules to handle "tricky" protocols, such as FTP, RealAudio, Quake, etc. For really hard-to-handle protocols, the "auto forwarding" facility can handle some of them by automatically setting up port forwarding for related sets of ports: look for ``ipportfw'' (2.0 kernels) or ``ipmasqadm'' (2.1 kernels).
Any services you wish the Internet to access must be on the firewall. (But see Limited Internal Services below).
Example: Allowing web access from private network to the Internet.
Netscape on myhost reads http://slashdot.org.
ie. From the slashdot.org's point of view, the connection is made from 1.2.3.4 (firewall's PPP interface) port 65000 to 207.218.152.131 (slashdot.org) port 80. From the myhost's point of view, the connection is made from 192.168.1.100 (myhost) port 1050, to 207.218.152.131 (slashdot.org) port 80.
In this scenario, your personal network is a part of the Internet: packets can flow without change across both networks. The IP addresses of the internal network must be assigned by applying for a block of IP addresses, so the rest of the network will know how to get packets to you. This implies a permanent connection
In this role, packet filtering is used to restrict which packets can be forwarded between your network and the rest of the Internet, eg. to restrict the rest of the Internet to only accessing your internal web servers.
Example: Allowing web access from private network to the Internet.
Netscape on myhost reads http://slashdot.org.
ie. There is only one connection: from 1.2.3.100 (myhost) port 1050, to 207.218.152.131 (slashdot.org) port 80.
There are a few tricks you can pull to allow the Internet to access your internal services, rather than running the services on the firewall. These will work with either a proxy or masquerading based approach for external connections.
The simplest approach is to run a "redirector", which is a poor-man's proxy which waits for a connection on a given port, and then open a connection a fixed internal host and port, and copies data between the two connections. An example of this is the "redir" program. From the Internet point of view, the connection is made to your firewall. >From your internal server's point of view, the connection is made from the internal interface of the firewall to the server.
Another approach (which requires a 2.0 kernel patched for ipportfw, or a 2.1 or later kernel) is to use port forwarding in the kernel. This does the same job as "redir" in a different way: the kernel rewrites packets as they pass through, changing their destination address and ports to point them at an internal host and port. From the Internet's point of view, the connection is made to your firewall. From your internal server's point of view, a direct connection is made from the Internet host to the server.