*sigh* Thanks for the answers Justin but I was only asking those questions to start a discussion about forwarding and maybe find someone that can help you with your problem. I have no need for forwarding, I am merely curious as to what can be done on a network with a *nix box. So far I'm impressed with what has been done, except for my question about the FORWARD chain... let me explain what I am talking about. In all the examples I've seen, the way to forward a packet is to do something like this: $IPTABLES -A FORWARD -i $LAN_IFACE -j ACCEPT $IPTABLES -A FORWARD -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT As you can see, there is no reference to either the mangle table or filter table... so where does the system append the rule? An obvious answer might be that the system appends the rule in both FORWARD chains, (if there is two chains). But that would mean that a single rule would take up twice the amount of space it would need and it also brings up something that occurs with this next, possible answer. What if there is only one chain, used by two tables. Since it seems that the system moves through the tables sequentially, then the exact same compares will be made in both tables. You would have a major redundancy in a very important part of the networking process, especially if the system is a gateway. So there is my question again, restated as clearly as I can possibly make it. I have been asking questions as nicely as I can here and no one wants to reply, so I think I need to say something to the people who are reading my posts and just sending them to the bit bucket. *nix is not user friendly and it is because everyone who works on it likes to complicate things first, then simplify (a flaw most people have, myself included). *nix will NEVER be user friendly because that is the way we like it, raw output, difficult challenges and total control over everything. The community must make up for the unfriendly nature of the OS by being friendly to people who are moving from Windows and looking for help, like me. Ignoring people is just going to make everyone give-up on *nix and stick with microsoft, which means your *nix knowledge will only ever be a hobby and you will have to have M$ certification to get work; which would be sad because this is a far more powerful and useful OS. If what I said makes you angry, then flame away. Better then nothing! :) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Friends. Fun. Try the all-new Yahoo! Messenger. http://messenger.yahoo.com/
