nftables is the modern Linux kernel packet classification framework. It replaces the popular {ip,ip6,arp,eb}tables.
This software provides a new in-kernel packet classification framework that is based on a network-specific Virtual Machine (VM) and a new nft userspace command line tool.
nftables reuses the existing Netfilter subsystems such as the existing hook infrastructure, the connection tracking system, NAT, userspace queueing and logging subsystem.
This software also provides libnftables, the high-level userspace library that includes support for JSON
This is free and open source software.
Features include:
- Network-specific VM: the nft command line tool compiles the ruleset into the VM bytecode in netlink format, then it pushes this into the kernel via the nftables Netlink API. When retrieving the ruleset, the VM bytecode in netlink format is decompiled back to its original ruleset representation. So nft behaves both as compiler and decompiler.
- High performance through maps and concatenations: Linear ruleset inspection doesn’t scale up. Using maps and concatenations, you can structure your ruleset to reduce the number of rule inspections to find the final action on the packet to the bare minimum.
- Smaller kernel codebase. The intelligence is placed in userspace nft command line tool, which is considerably more complex than iptables in terms of codebase, however, in the midrun, this will potentially allow us to deliver new features by upgrading the userspace command line tool, with no need of kernel upgrades.
- Unified and consistent syntax for every support protocol family, contrary to xtables utilities, that are well-known to be full of inconsistencies.
Website: www.netfilter.org
Support:
Developer: The Netfilter Project
License: GNU General Public License v2.0
nftables is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
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