[CentOS] What is the diffrence between port filtering and packet filtering ?

Wed Feb 7 06:49:24 UTC 2007
John R Pierce <pierce at hogranch.com>

Indunil Jayasooriya wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I want to set up a firewall on CentOS 4.4.
>
> I wnat to know the diiffrence between port filtering and packet 
> filtering ?
>
> Can iptables do both?
>
> Is there another pkg better than this? if so, pls let me know.
>
> The purpose of this is to setup a firewall for production use.

centos is a general purpose server-oriented distribution... while it has 
firewalling capabilities, properly configuring it as a good production 
firewall would require a thorough knowlege of internet security, network 
protocols, firewall rules in general, and iptables in specific.    
iptables can do almost anything imaginable if you can figure out how to 
specify the rules, but it doesn't do anything at all until you configure it.

you might be better off with a purpose built firewall distribution such 
as ipcop or pfsense or smoothwall