Hi, This is my first time posting to this ML. First, I want to wish everyone a very Happy New Year. :) Next, and quite coincidentially(or not), the first thread I read was what I wanted to know about, amongst other things. Pardon my ignorance and stupidity, I'm familiar with IPChains, but IPtables is a little tad bit more complicated so some of my questions might sound a tad bit..um.. stupid. But just for clarification, I'm using 2.4.20 (Slackware) and using IPTABLES(probably redundant info). I'm not entirely familiar with the 2.4.x kernel system. (I'm more or less familiar with the 2.2. version, but I figured with a new system, I might as well try the newest stable kernels.) I currently have a LAN behind a router that's using dynamic IP. But within the next few days, we'll be setting up a fixed IP (while still using the dynamic one in parallel for backup for now). I'm thinking of setting up a system to be the router/firewall for the fixed IP until the dynamic IP plan expires. AFter that, I'll remove the router functionality from the system and use it as a strict firewall. Can someone tell me whether or not this is a good idea? With bridging in place (according to the "Doing Bridge with firewall" thread), the router's internal IP should belong to the same network as the LAN, right? Then the firewalling functionality of the bridge system will still work? (I too was a little confused on the issue of bridging vs. NATing). Is it necessary to even set up a bridge for the firewall system? Also, just as an aside, I've setup a 'temporary test' setup where this firewall system is within the LAN but hooked up to a test machine whereby this test machine's IP is different from the rest of the LAN (as follows:) test machine IP = 192.168.10.1 firewall 'internal' IP = 192.168.10.2 (eth0) firewall 'external' IP = 192.168.11.120 (eth1 ) (the LAN's network is 192.168.11.0) So far, with the following command: # # also including the necessary flushing of the iptables # /usr/sbin/iptables -A FORWARD -i eth0 -o eth1 -j MASQUERADE I can surf the web and check email, but I can't log in to the LAN's network (Novell-based). Now I realize that this might defeat the functionality of the firewall, but is there a way to allow Novell-packets through the firewall? (It is only temporary. The real firewall won't allow Novell IPX packets going through..) Any clarifications appreciated. Edmund