Fedora builds the kernel with CONFIG_IP_NF_IPTABLES=y. This is known to have a measurable performance impact even when there are no firewall rules. This is a series of 10 tests made with a Fedora 4.19.0-1.fc30 kernel built with ip_tables as module, thousands of packets per second on an 8 core machine: no module ip_filter loaded run 1 8.484 8.027 run 2 8.466 8.042 run 3 8.446 8.176 run 4 8.313 7.900 run 5 8.457 8.165 run 6 8.459 8.202 run 7 8.403 7.978 run 8 8.487 7.991 run 9 8.567 8.124 run 10 8.244 7.966 ---------------------------- average 8.433 8.057 stdev 92 103 % -4,66% Building iptable_filter as module should not have any disadvantage because it's loaded on first iptables call, and dracut can be instructed to put it in the initramfs if needed. This is what happens on Fedora 29 (obviously with firewalld disabled on boot): # lsmod |grep iptable # iptables -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT # lsmod |grep iptable iptable_filter 16384 1 ip_tables 28672 1 iptable_filter x_tables 45056 2 iptable_filter,ip_tables Regards, -- Matteo Croce per aspera ad upstream _______________________________________________ kernel mailing list -- kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to kernel-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fedora Code of Conduct: https://getfedora.org/code-of-conduct.html List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx