Subject: Re: [RFD] iptables: mangle table obsoletes filter table

From: Patrick McHardy <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 06:39:48 +0200

Patrick McHardy wrote:
> Please send mails discussing netfilter to netfilter-devel.

Correct address CCed and unrelated lists removed .. stupid
auto-completion :)

> Al Boldi wrote:
> 
>>With the existence of the mangle table, how useful is the filter table?
>>
>>Other than requiring the REJECT target to be ported to the mangle table, is 
>>the filter table faster than the mangle table?
> 
> 
> There are some minor differences in ordering (mangle comes before
> DNAT, filter afterwards), but for most rulesets thats completely
> irrelevant. The only difference that really matters is that mangle
> performs rerouting in LOCAL_OUT for packets that had their routing
> key changed, so its really a superset of the filter table. If you
> want to use REJECT in the mangle table, you just need to remove the
> restriction to filter, it works fine. I would prefer to also remove
> the restriction of MARK, CONNMARK etc. to mangle, they're used for
> more than just routing today so that restriction also doesn't make
> much sense. Patches for this are welcome.
> 
> 
>>If not, then shouldn't the filter table be obsoleted to avoid confusion?
> 
> 
> That would probably confuse people. Just don't use it if you don't
> need to.