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IPFW(8) System Manager's Manual IPFW(8)

ipfwIP firewall and traffic shaper control program

ipfw [-cq] add rule

ipfw [-acdeftNS] {list | show} [number ...]

ipfw [-fq] flush

ipfw [-q] {delete | zero | resetlog} [set] [number ...]

ipfw enable {firewall | one_pass | debug | verbose | dyn_keepalive}

ipfw disable {firewall | one_pass | debug | verbose | dyn_keepalive}


ipfw set [disable number ...] [enable number ...]

ipfw set move [rule] number to number

ipfw set swap number number

ipfw set show


ipfw {pipe | queue} number config config-options

ipfw [-s [field]] {pipe | queue} {delete | list | show} [number ...]


ipfw [-q] table number create

ipfw [-fq] table number destroy

ipfw [-fq] table [number] flush

ipfw table list

ipfw [-at] table number {show | print}

ipfw [-q] table number {add | delete} address [address ...]

ipfw [-q] table [number] zero

ipfw [-fq] table [number] expire seconds


ipfw [-q] [-p preproc [-D macro[=value]] [-U macro]] pathname

The ipfw utility is the user interface for controlling the ipfw(4) firewall and the dummynet(4) traffic shaper in DragonFly.

NOTE: this manual page documents the newer version of ipfw introduced in FreeBSD CURRENT in July 2002, also known as ipfw2. ipfw2 is a superset of the old firewall, ipfw1. The differences between the two are listed in Section IPFW2 ENHANCEMENTS, which you are encouraged to read to revise older rulesets and possibly write them more efficiently.

An ipfw configuration, or ruleset, is made of a list of numbered from 1 to 65535. Packets are passed to ipfw from a number of different places in the protocol stack (depending on the source and destination of the packet, it is possible that ipfw is invoked multiple times on the same packet). The packet passed to the firewall is compared against each of the rules in the firewall ruleset. When a match is found, the action corresponding to the matching rule is performed.

Depending on the action and certain system settings, packets can be reinjected into the firewall at some rule after the matching one for further processing.

An ipfw ruleset always includes a default rule (numbered 65535) which cannot be modified, and matches all packets. The action associated with the default rule can be either deny or allow depending on how the kernel is configured.

If the ruleset includes one or more rules with the keep-state, redirect or limit option, then ipfw assumes a behaviour, i.e. upon a match it will create states matching the exact parameters (addresses and ports) of the matching packet.

These states, which have a limited lifetime, are checked at the first occurrence of a check-state, keep-state, redirect or limit rule, and are typically used to open the firewall on-demand to legitimate traffic only. See the STATEFUL FIREWALL and EXAMPLES Sections below for more information on the stateful behaviour of ipfw.

All rules (including states) have a few associated counters: a packet count, a byte count, a log count and a timestamp indicating the time of the last match. Counters can be displayed or reset with ipfw commands.

Rules can be added with the add command; deleted individually or in groups with the delete command, and globally with the flush command; displayed, optionally with the content of the counters, using the show and list commands. Finally, counters can be reset with the zero and resetlog commands.

Also, each rule belongs to one of 32 different sets , and there are ipfw commands to atomically manipulate sets, such as enable, disable, swap sets, move all rules in a set to another one, delete all rules in a set. These can be useful to install temporary configurations, or to test them. See Section SETS OF RULES for more information on sets.

The following options are available:

While listing, show counter values. The show command just implies this option.
When entering or showing rules, print them in compact form, i.e. without the optional "ip from any to any" string when this does not carry any additional information.
While listing, show states and tracks in addition to static ones.
While listing, if the -d option was specified, also show expired states and tracks.
Don't ask for confirmation for commands that can cause problems if misused, i.e. flush. If there is no tty associated with the process, this is implied.
Try to resolve addresses and service names in output.
While adding, zeroing, resetlogging or flushing, be quiet about actions (implies -f). This is useful for adjusting rules by executing multiple ipfw commands in a script (e.g., ‘sh /etc/rc.firewall’), or by processing a file of many ipfw rules across a remote login session. If a flush is performed in normal (verbose) mode (with the default kernel configuration), it prints a message. Because all rules are flushed, the message might not be delivered to the login session, causing the remote login session to be closed and the remainder of the ruleset to not be processed. Access to the console would then be required to recover.
While listing rules, show the set each rule belongs to. If this flag is not specified, disabled rules will not be listed.
[field]
While listing pipes, sort according to one of the four counters (total or current packets or bytes).
While listing, show last match timestamp.

To ease configuration, rules can be put into a file which is processed using ipfw as shown in the last synopsis line. An absolute pathname must be used. The file will be read line by line and applied as arguments to the ipfw utility.

Optionally, a preprocessor can be specified using -p preproc where pathname is to be piped through. Useful preprocessors include cpp(1) and m4(1). If preproc doesn't start with a slash (‘/’) as its first character, the usual PATH name search is performed. Care should be taken with this in environments where not all file systems are mounted (yet) by the time ipfw is being run (e.g. when they are mounted over NFS). Once -p has been specified, optional -D and -U specifications can follow and will be passed on to the preprocessor. This allows for flexible configuration files (like conditionalizing them on the local hostname) and the use of macros to centralize frequently required arguments like IP addresses.

The ipfw pipe and queue commands are used to configure the traffic shaper, as shown in the TRAFFIC SHAPER (DUMMYNET) CONFIGURATION Section below.

If the world and the kernel get out of sync the ipfw ABI may break, preventing you from being able to add any rules. This can adversely affect the booting process. You can use ipfw disable firewall to temporarily disable the firewall to regain access to the network, allowing you to fix the problem.

A packet is checked against the active ruleset in multiple places in the protocol stack, under control of several sysctl variables. These places and variables are shown below, and it is important to have this picture in mind in order to design a correct ruleset.

         ^     to upper layers     V
         |                         |
         +------------>------------+
         ^                         V
    [ip_input]                [ip_output]   net.inet.ip.fw.enable=1
         |                         |
         ^                         V
[ether_demux_oncpu]   [ether_output_frame]  net.link.ether.ipfw=1
         ^                         V
         |       to devices        |

As can be noted from the above picture, the number of times the same packet goes through the firewall can vary between 0 and 4 depending on packet source and destination, and system configuration.

Note that as packets flow through the stack, headers can be stripped or added to it, and so they may or may not be available for inspection. E.g., incoming packets will include the MAC header when ipfw is invoked from (), but the same packets will have the MAC header stripped off when ipfw is invoked from ip_input().

Also note that each packet is always checked against the complete ruleset, irrespective of the place where the check occurs, or the source of the packet. If a rule contains some match patterns or actions which are not valid for the place of invocation (e.g. trying to match a MAC header within ()), the match pattern will not match, but a not operator in front of such patterns cause the pattern to match on those packets. It is thus the responsibility of the programmer, if necessary, to write a suitable ruleset to differentiate among the possible places. skipto rules can be useful here, as an example:

# packets from ether_demux_oncpu
ipfw add 10 skipto 1000 all from any to any layer2 in
# packets from ip_input
ipfw add 10 skipto 2000 all from any to any not layer2 in
# packets from ip_output
ipfw add 10 skipto 3000 all from any to any not layer2 out
# packets from ether_output_frame
ipfw add 10 skipto 4000 all from any to any layer2 out

The format of ipfw rules is the following:

[rule_number] [set set_number] [prob match_probability]
action [log [logamount number]] body

where the body of the rule specifies which information is used for filtering packets, among the following:

Layer-2 header fields
When available
IPv4 Protocol
TCP, UDP, ICMP, etc.
Source and dest. addresses and ports
 
Direction
See Section PACKET FLOW
Transmit and receive interface
By name or address
Misc. IP header fields
Version, type of service, datagram length, identification, fragment flag, Time To Live
IP options
 
Misc. TCP header fields
TCP flags (SYN, FIN, ACK, RST, etc.), sequence number, acknowledgment number, window
TCP options
 
ICMP types
for ICMP packets
User/group ID
When the packet can be associated with a local socket.

Note that some of the above information, e.g. source MAC or IP addresses and TCP/UDP ports, could easily be spoofed, so filtering on those fields alone might not guarantee the desired results.

rule_number
Each rule is associated with a rule_number in the range 1..65535, with the latter reserved for the default rule. Rules are checked sequentially by rule number. Multiple rules can have the same number, in which case they are checked (and listed) according to the order in which they have been added. If a rule is entered without specifying a number, the kernel will assign one in such a way that the rule becomes the last one before the default rule. Automatic rule numbers are assigned by incrementing the last non-default rule number by the value of the sysctl variable net.inet.ip.fw.autoinc_step which defaults to 100. If this is not possible (e.g. because we would go beyond the maximum allowed rule number), the number of the last non-default value is used instead.
set_number
Each rule is associated with a set_number in the range 0..31, with the latter reserved for the default rule. Sets can be individually disabled and enabled, so this parameter is of fundamental importance for atomic ruleset manipulation. It can be also used to simplify deletion of groups of rules. If a rule is entered without specifying a set number, set 0 will be used.
match_probability
A match is only declared with the specified probability (floating point number between 0 and 1). This can be useful for a number of applications such as random packet drop or (in conjunction with dummynet(4)) to simulate the effect of multiple paths leading to out-of-order packet delivery.
[logamount number]
When a packet matches a rule with the log keyword, a message will be logged to syslogd(8) with a LOG_SECURITY facility. The logging only occurs if the sysctl variable net.inet.ip.fw.verbose is set to 1 (which is the default when the kernel is compiled with IPFIREWALL_VERBOSE) and the number of packets logged so far for that particular rule does not exceed the logamount parameter. If no logamount is specified, the limit is taken from the sysctl variable net.inet.ip.fw.verbose_limit. In both cases, a value of 0 removes the logging limit.

Once the limit is reached, logging can be re-enabled by clearing the logging counter or the packet counter for that entry, see the resetlog command.

A rule can be associated with one of the following actions, which will be executed when the packet matches the body of the rule.

| | |
Allow packets that match rule. The search terminates.
Checks the packet against the state table. If a match is found, execute the action associated with the rule which generated this state, otherwise move to the next rule.
Check-state rules do not have a body. If no check-state rule is found, the state table is checked at the first keep-state, redirect or limit rule.
Update counters for all packets that match rule. The search continues with the next rule.
Reassemble IP fragments. If an IP packet was reassembled, the reassembled IP packet would be passed to the next rule for further evaluation. This action only applies to IP fragments received by (). The most common way to use this action is like this:

ipfw add defrag ip from any to any

It is recommended to reassemble IP fragments before check-state, keep-state, redirect, limit or any layer 4 protocols filtering, e.g., tcp, udp, and icmp.

|
Discard packets that match this rule. The search terminates.
port
Divert packets that match this rule to the divert(4) socket bound to port port. The search terminates.
| ipaddr[,port]
Change the next-hop on matching packets to ipaddr, which can be an IP address in dotted quad format or a host name. The search terminates if this rule matches.

If ipaddr is a local address, then matching packets will be forwarded to port (or the port number in the packet if one is not specified in the rule) on the local machine.
If ipaddr is not a local address, then the port number (if specified) is ignored, and the packet will be forwarded to the remote address, using the route as found in the local routing table for that IP.
A fwd rule will not match layer-2 packets (those received on () or ()).
The fwd action does not change the contents of the packet at all. In particular, the destination address remains unmodified, so packets forwarded to another system will usually be rejected by that system unless there is a matching rule on that system to capture them. For packets forwarded locally, the local address of the socket will be set to the original destination address of the packet. This makes the netstat(1) entry look rather weird but is intended for use with transparent proxy servers.

pipe_nr
Pass packet to a dummynet(4) “pipe” (for bandwidth limitation, delay, etc.). See the TRAFFIC SHAPER (DUMMYNET) CONFIGURATION Section for further information. The search terminates; however, on exit from the pipe and if the sysctl(8) variable net.inet.ip.fw.one_pass is not set, the packet is passed again to the firewall code starting from the next rule.
queue_nr
Pass packet to a dummynet(4) “queue” (for bandwidth limitation using WF2Q+).
(Deprecated). Synonym for unreach host.
Discard packets that match this rule, and if the packet is a TCP packet, try to send a TCP reset (RST) notice. The search terminates.
number
Skip all subsequent rules numbered less than number. The search continues with the first rule numbered number or higher.
port
Send a copy of packets matching this rule to the divert(4) socket bound to port port. The search terminates and the original packet is accepted (but see Section BUGS below).
code
Discard packets that match this rule, and try to send an ICMP unreachable notice with code code, where code is a number from 0 to 255, or one of these aliases: net, host, protocol, port, needfrag, srcfail, net-unknown, host-unknown, isolated, net-prohib, host-prohib, tosnet, toshost, filter-prohib, host-precedence or precedence-cutoff. The search terminates.

The body of a rule contains zero or more patterns (such as specific source and destination addresses or ports, protocol options, incoming or outgoing interfaces, etc.) that the packet must match in order to be recognised. In general, the patterns are connected by (implicit) and operators -- i.e. all must match in order for the rule to match. Individual patterns can be prefixed by the not operator to reverse the result of the match, as in

ipfw add 100 allow ip from not 1.2.3.4 to any

Additionally, sets of alternative match patterns (or-blocks) can be constructed by putting the patterns in lists enclosed between parentheses ( ) or braces { }, and using the or operator as follows:

ipfw add 100 allow ip from { x or not y or z } to any

Only one level of parentheses is allowed. Beware that most shells have special meanings for parentheses or braces, so it is advisable to put a backslash \ in front of them to prevent such interpretations.

The body of a rule must in general include a source and destination address specifier. The keyword any can be used in various places to specify that the content of a required field is irrelevant.

The rule body has the following format:

[proto from src to dst] [options]

The first part (protocol from src to dst) is for backward compatibility with ipfw1. In ipfw2 any match pattern (including MAC headers, IPv4 protocols, addresses and ports) can be specified in the options section.

Rule fields have the following meaning:

proto: protocol | protocol or ... }
An IPv4 protocol (or an or-block with multiple protocols) specified by number or name (for a complete list see /etc/protocols). The ip or all keywords mean any protocol will match.
src and dst: ip-address | ip-address or ... } [ports]
A single ip-address , or an or-block containing one or more of them, optionally followed by ports specifiers.
ip-address:
An address (or set of addresses) specified in one of the following ways, optionally preceded by a not operator:
matches any IP address.
matches any IP address configured on an interface in the system. The address list is evaluated at the time the packet is analysed.
number>
Matches any network or host addresses in the table specified by the number.
[ifX]
Matches the first IPv4 address assigned to the ifX. It is intended to help matching the IPv4 address assigned to the ifX dynamically, e.g. by DHCP.
[ifX:net]
Matches the IPv4 network of the first IPv4 address assigned to the ifX. It is intended to help matching the IPv4 network of the IPv4 address assigned to the ifX dynamically, e.g. by DHCP.
numeric-ip | hostname
Matches a single IPv4 address, specified as dotted-quad or a hostname. Hostnames are resolved at the time the rule is added to the firewall list.
addr/masklen
Matches all addresses with base addr (specified as a dotted quad or a hostname) and mask width of masklen bits. As an example, 1.2.3.4/25 will match all IP numbers from 1.2.3.0 to 1.2.3.127 .
addr/masklen{num,num,...}
Matches all addresses with base address addr (specified as a dotted quad or a hostname) and whose last byte is in the list between braces { } . Note that there must be no spaces between braces, commas and numbers. The masklen field is used to limit the size of the set of addresses, and can have any value between 24 and 32.
As an example, an address specified as 1.2.3.4/24{128,35,55,89} will match the following IP addresses:
1.2.3.128 1.2.3.35 1.2.3.55 1.2.3.89 .
This format is particularly useful to handle sparse address sets within a single rule. Because the matching occurs using a bitmask, it takes constant time and dramatically reduces the complexity of rulesets.
addr:mask
Matches all addresses with base addr (specified as a dotted quad or a hostname) and the mask of mask, specified as a dotted quad. As an example, 1.2.3.4/255.0.255.0 will match 1.*.3.*. We suggest to use this form only for non-contiguous masks, and resort to the addr/masklen format for contiguous masks, which is more compact and less error-prone.
ports: [not] {port | port-port} [,...]
For protocols which support port numbers (such as TCP and UDP), optional ports may be specified as one or more ports or port ranges, separated by commas but no spaces, and an optional not operator. The ‘-’ notation specifies a range of ports (including boundaries).

Service names (from /etc/services) may be used instead of numeric port values. The length of the port list is limited to 30 ports or ranges, though one can specify larger ranges by using an or-block in the options section of the rule.

A backslash (‘\’) can be used to escape the dash (‘-’) character in a service name (from a shell, the backslash must be typed twice to avoid the shell itself interpreting it as an escape character).

ipfw add count tcp from any ftp\\-data-ftp to any

Fragmented packets which have a non-zero offset (i.e. not the first fragment) will never match a rule which has one or more port specifications. See the frag and ipfrag options for details on matching fragmented packets. Ane see the defrag action for reassembling IP fragments.

Additional match patterns can be used within rules. Zero or more of these so-called can be present in a rule, optionally prefixed by the not operand, and possibly grouped into or-blocks.

The following match patterns can be used (listed in alphabetical order):

ip-address
Matches IP packets whose destination IP is one of the address(es) specified as argument.
ports
Matches IP packets whose destination port is one of the port(s) specified as argument.
Matches TCP packets that have the RST or ACK bits set.
Matches packets that are fragments and not the first fragment of an IP datagram. Note that these packets will not have the next protocol header (e.g. TCP, UDP) so options that look into these headers cannot match. See also ipfrag option and defrag action.
group
Matches all TCP or UDP packets sent by or received for a group. A group may be specified by name or number.
codes
Matches ICMP packets whose ICMP code is in the list codes. The list may be specified as any combination of ranges or individual types separated by commas. It should be used along with icmptypes.
types
Matches ICMP packets whose ICMP type is in the list types. The list may be specified as any combination of ranges or individual types separated by commas. Commonly used ICMP types are:

echo reply (0), destination unreachable (3), source quench (4), redirect (5), echo request (8), router advertisement (9), router solicitation (10), time-to-live exceeded (11), IP header bad (12), timestamp request (13), timestamp reply (14), information request (15), information reply (16), address mask request (17) and address mask reply (18).

|
Matches incoming or outgoing packets, respectively. in and out are mutually exclusive (in fact, out is implemented as not in).
Matches IP fragment, even if it's the first fragment. See also frag option and defrag action.
id
Matches IP packets whose ip_id field has value id.
len
Matches IP packets whose total length, including header and data, is len bytes.
spec
Matches packets whose IP header contains the comma separated list of options specified in spec. The supported IP options are:

ssrr (strict source route), lsrr (loose source route), rr (record packet route) and ts (timestamp). The absence of a particular option may be denoted with a ‘!’.

precedence
Matches IP packets whose precedence field is equal to precedence.
spec
Matches IP packets whose tos field contains the comma separated list of service types specified in spec. The supported IP types of service are:

lowdelay (IPTOS_LOWDELAY), throughput (IPTOS_THROUGHPUT), reliability (IPTOS_RELIABILITY), mincost (IPTOS_MINCOST), congestion (IPTOS_CE). The absence of a particular type may be denoted with a ‘!’.

ttl
Matches IP packets whose time to live is ttl.
ver
Matches IP packets whose IP version field is ver.
Upon a match, the firewall will create a state, whose default behaviour is to match bidirectional traffic between source and destination IP/port using the same protocol. The rule has a limited lifetime (controlled by a set of sysctl(8) variables), and the lifetime is refreshed every time a matching packet is found.
Matches only layer2 packets, i.e. those passed to ipfw from () and ().
{src-addr | src-port | dst-addr | dst-port} N
The firewall will only allow N connections with the same set of parameters as specified in the rule. One or more of source and destination addresses and ports can be specified.
| dst-mac src-mac
Match packets with a given dst-mac and src-mac addresses, specified as the any keyword (matching any MAC address), or six groups of hex digits separated by colons, and optionally followed by a mask indicating how many bits are significant, as in

MAC 10:20:30:40:50:60/33 any

Note that the order of MAC addresses (destination first, source second) is the same as on the wire, but the opposite of the one used for IP addresses.

mac-type
Matches packets whose Ethernet Type field corresponds to one of those specified as argument. mac-type is specified in the same way as port numbers (i.e. one or more comma-separated single values or ranges). You can use symbolic names for known values such as , . Values can be entered as decimal or hexadecimal (if prefixed by 0x), and they are always printed as hexadecimal (unless the -N option is used, in which case symbolic resolution will be attempted).
protocol
Matches packets with the corresponding IPv4 protocol.
| ipaddr[,port]
Upon a match, the TCP or UDP packet will be redirected to port on ipaddr, after changing the packet's destination IP address to ipaddr, and destination port to port. If port is omitted, packet's destination port will not be changed. This rule only applies to in TCP or UDP packets. This rule requires recv and dst-port, or ports specified after dst in rule body. This rule will create a state. See keep-state.
| | {ifX | if* | ipno | any}
Matches packets received, transmitted or going through, respectively, the interface specified by exact name (ifX), by device name (if*), by IP address, or through some interface.

The via keyword causes the interface to always be checked. If recv or xmit is used instead of via, then only the receive or transmit interface (respectively) is checked. By specifying both, it is possible to match packets based on both receive and transmit interface, e.g.:

ipfw add deny ip from any to any out recv ed0 xmit ed1

The recv interface can be tested on either incoming or outgoing packets, while the xmit interface can only be tested on outgoing packets. So out is required (and in is invalid) whenever xmit is used.

A packet may not have a receive or transmit interface: packets originating from the local host have no receive interface, while packets destined for the local host have no transmit interface.

Matches TCP packets that have the SYN bit set but no ACK bit. This is the short form of “tcpflags syn,!ack”.
ip-address
Matches IP packets whose source IP is one of the address(es) specified as argument.
ports
Matches IP packets whose source port is one of the port(s) specified as argument.
ack
TCP packets only. Match if the TCP header acknowledgment number field is set to ack.
spec
TCP packets only. Match if the TCP header contains the comma separated list of flags specified in spec. The supported TCP flags are:

fin, syn, rst, psh, ack and urg. The absence of a particular flag may be denoted with a ‘!’. A rule which contains a tcpflags specification can never match a fragmented packet which has a non-zero offset. See the frag and ipfrag options for details on matching fragmented packets. And see the defrag action for reassembling IP fragments.

seq
TCP packets only. Match if the TCP header sequence number field is set to seq.
win
TCP packets only. Match if the TCP header window field is set to win.
spec
TCP packets only. Match if the TCP header contains the comma separated list of options specified in spec. The supported TCP options are:

mss (maximum segment size), window (tcp window advertisement), sack (selective ack), ts (rfc1323 timestamp) and cc (rfc1644 t/tcp connection count). The absence of a particular option may be denoted with a ‘!’.

user
Match all TCP or UDP packets sent by or received for a user. A user may be matched by name or identification number.

SETS OF RULES

Each rule belongs to one of 32 different sets , numbered 0 to 31. Set 31 is reserved for the default rule.

By default, rules are put in set 0, unless you use the set N attribute when entering a new rule. Sets can be individually and atomically enabled or disabled, so this mechanism permits an easy way to store multiple configurations of the firewall and quickly (and atomically) switch between them. The command to enable/disable sets is

ipfw set [disable number ...] [enable number ...]

where multiple enable or disable sections can be specified. Command execution is atomic on all the sets specified in the command. By default, all sets are enabled.

When you disable a set, its rules behave as if they do not exist in the firewall configuration, with only one exception:

states and tracks created from a rule before it had been disabled will still be active until they expire. In order to delete states and tracks you have to explicitly delete the parent rule which generated them.

The set number of rules can be changed with the command

ipfw set move {rule rule-number | old-set} to new-set

Also, you can atomically swap two rulesets with the command

ipfw set swap first-set second-set

See the EXAMPLES Section on some possible uses of sets of rules.

Stateful operation is a way for the firewall to dynamically create states and tracks for specific flows when packets that match a given pattern are detected. Support for stateful operation comes through the check-state, keep-state, redirect and limit options of ipfw rules.

States are created when a packet matches a keep-state, redirect or limit rule, causing the creation of a which will match all and only packets with a given between a pair of addresses ( and are used here only to denote the initial match addresses, but they are completely equivalent afterwards). Additionally, tracks are created when a packet matches a limit rule. States will be checked at the first check-state, keep-state, redirect, or limit occurrence, and the action performed upon a match will be the same as in the parent rule.

Note that no additional attributes other than protocol and IP addresses and ports are checked on states.

The typical use of states is to keep a closed firewall configuration, but let the first TCP SYN packet from the inside network install a state for the flow so that packets belonging to that session will be allowed through the firewall:

ipfw add check-state
ipfw add allow tcp from my-subnet to any setup keep-state
ipfw add deny tcp from any to any

A similar approach can be used for UDP, where an UDP packet coming from the inside will install a state to let the response through the firewall:

ipfw add check-state
ipfw add allow udp from my-subnet to any keep-state
ipfw add deny udp from any to any

States and tracks expire after some time, which depends on the status of the flow and the setting of some sysctl variables. See Section SYSCTL VARIABLES for more details. For TCP sessions, states can be instructed to periodically send keepalive packets to refresh the state of the rule when it is about to expire.

See Section EXAMPLES for more examples on how to use states.

ipfw is also the user interface for the dummynet(4) traffic shaper.

dummynet operates by first using the firewall to classify packets and divide them into , using any match pattern that can be used in ipfw rules. Depending on local policies, a flow can contain packets for a single TCP connection, or from/to a given host, or entire subnet, or a protocol type, etc.

Packets belonging to the same flow are then passed to either of two different objects, which implement the traffic regulation:

A pipe emulates a link with given bandwidth, propagation delay, queue size and packet loss rate. Packets are queued in front of the pipe as they come out from the classifier, and then transferred to the pipe according to the pipe's parameters.
A queue is an abstraction used to implement the WF2Q+ (Worst-case Fair Weighted Fair Queueing) policy, which is an efficient variant of the WFQ policy.
The queue associates a weight and a reference pipe to each flow, and then all backlogged (i.e., with packets queued) flows linked to the same pipe share the pipe's bandwidth proportionally to their weights. Note that weights are not priorities; a flow with a lower weight is still guaranteed to get its fraction of the bandwidth even if a flow with a higher weight is permanently backlogged.
In practice, can be used to set hard limits to the bandwidth that a flow can use, whereas can be used to determine how different flow share the available bandwidth.

The pipe and queue configuration commands are the following:

pipe number config pipe-configuration

queue number config queue-configuration

The following parameters can be configured for a pipe:

bandwidth
Bandwidth, measured in [K|M]{bit/s|Byte/s}.

A value of 0 (default) means unlimited bandwidth. The unit must immediately follow the number, as in

ipfw pipe 1 config bw 300Kbit/s

ms-delay
Propagation delay, measured in milliseconds. The value is rounded to the next multiple of the clock tick (typically 10ms, but it is a good practice to run kernels with options HZ=1000 to reduce the granularity to 1ms or less). Default value is 0, meaning no delay.

The following parameters can be configured for a queue:

pipe_nr
Connects a queue to the specified pipe. Multiple queues (with the same or different weights) can be connected to the same pipe, which specifies the aggregate rate for the set of queues.

weight
Specifies the weight to be used for flows matching this queue. The weight must be in the range 1..100, and defaults to 1.

Finally, the following parameters can be configured for both pipes and queues:

hash-table-size
Specifies the size of the hash table used for storing the various queues. Default value is 64 controlled by the sysctl(8) variable net.inet.ip.dummynet.hash_size, allowed range is 16 to 65536.

mask-specifier
Packets sent to a given pipe or queue by an ipfw rule can be further classified into multiple flows, each of which is then sent to a different dynamic pipe or queue. A flow identifier is constructed by masking the IP addresses, ports and protocol types as specified with the mask options in the configuration of the pipe or queue. For each different flow identifier, a new pipe or queue is created with the same parameters as the original object, and matching packets are sent to it.

Thus, when dynamic pipes are used, each flow will get the same bandwidth as defined by the pipe, whereas when dynamic queues are used, each flow will share the parent's pipe bandwidth evenly with other flows generated by the same queue (note that other queues with different weights might be connected to the same pipe).
Available mask specifiers are a combination of one or more of the following:

dst-ip mask, src-ip mask, dst-port mask, src-port mask, proto mask or all,

where the latter means all bits in all fields are significant.

When a packet is dropped by a dummynet queue or pipe, the error is normally reported to the caller routine in the kernel, in the same way as it happens when a device queue fills up. Setting this option reports the packet as successfully delivered, which can be needed for some experimental setups where you want to simulate loss or congestion at a remote router.

NOTE: This option is always on, since DragonFly 1.11.

packet-loss-rate
Packet loss rate. Argument packet-loss-rate is a floating-point number between 0 and 1, with 0 meaning no loss, 1 meaning 100% loss. The loss rate is internally represented on 31 bits.

{slots | sizeKbytes}
Queue size, in slots or KBytes. Default value is 50 slots, which is the typical queue size for Ethernet devices. Note that for slow speed links you should keep the queue size short or your traffic might be affected by a significant queueing delay. E.g., 50 max-sized ethernet packets (1500 bytes) mean 600Kbit or 20s of queue on a 30Kbit/s pipe. Even worse effect can result if you get packets from an interface with a much larger MTU, e.g. the loopback interface with its 16KB packets.

| w_q/min_th/max_th/max_p
Make use of the RED (Random Early Detection) queue management algorithm. w_q and max_p are floating point numbers between 0 and 1 (0 not included), while min_th and max_th are integer numbers specifying thresholds for queue management (thresholds are computed in bytes if the queue has been defined in bytes, in slots otherwise). The dummynet(4) also supports the gentle RED variant (gred). Three sysctl(8) variables can be used to control the RED behaviour:
specifies the accuracy in computing the average queue when the link is idle (defaults to 256, must be greater than zero)
specifies the expected average packet size (defaults to 512, must be greater than zero)
specifies the expected maximum packet size, only used when queue thresholds are in bytes (defaults to 1500, must be greater than zero).

Table provides a convenient way to support a large amount of discrete host or network addresses for the from, to, src-ip, and dst-ip. Non-existing tables never match. For network addresses, only CIDR form is supported.

Tables are identified by number, which ranges from 0 to net.inet.ip.fw.table_max - 1. Default number of available tables is 64, i.e. valid table ids are from 0 to 63. Number of available tables can be changed by setting tunable net.inet.ip.fw.table_max. Max configurable number of available tables is 65535.

Tables must be created explicitly before host or network addresses could be added to them:

table number create

Host or network addresses can be added to an existing table by using:

table number add address [address ...]

Host or network addresses can be removed from an existing table by using:

table number delete address [address ...]

Addresses in a table can be flushed by:

table number flush

Or you can optionally flush all existing tables:

table flush

Each address in a table has two counters. One records the number of usage, the other saves the time of the last match. These counters can be resetted for a specific table:

table number zero

Or you can reset counters of addresses in all existing tables by:

table zero

Host and network addresses in the tables are not expired by the ipfw, manual intervention is required to expire addresses unused in a table within the last seconds:

table number expire seconds

Optionally, you can expire all addresses that were unused within the last seconds by:

table expire seconds

An existing table can be destroyed by:

table number destroy

All existing tables can be listed by:

table list

All addresses in an existing table can be dumped by:

table number {print | show}

Here are some important points to consider when designing your rules:

A divert(4) socket bound to the specified port will receive all packets diverted to that port. If no socket is bound to the destination port, or if the kernel wasn't compiled with divert socket support, the packets are dropped.

A set of sysctl(8) variables controls the behaviour of the firewall and associated modules (dummynet). These are shown below together with their default value (but always check with the sysctl(8) command what value is actually in use) and meaning:

: 0
If set prior to loading the ipfw kernel module, the filter will default to allowing all packets through. If not set the filter will likely default to not allowing any packets through.
: 1
Lazily delete dynamic pipes/queue once they have no pending traffic. You can disable this by setting the variable to 0, in which case the pipes/queues will only be deleted when the threshold is reached.
: 64
Default size of the hash table used for dynamic pipes/queues. This value is used when no buckets option is specified when configuring a pipe/queue.
: 16
Target value for the maximum number of pipes/queues in a hash bucket. The product max_chain_len*hash_size is used to determine the threshold over which empty pipes/queues will be expired even when net.inet.ip.dummynet.expire=0.
: 256
 
: 512
 
: 1500
Parameters used in the computations of the drop probability for the RED algorithm.
: 100
Delta between rule numbers when auto-generating them. The value must be in the range 1..1000.
: 1
Controls debugging messages produced by ipfw.
: 64
Number of available tables. This value can only be changed by setting tunable net.inet.ip.fw.table_max.
: 3
Current number of states (read-only).
: 4096
Maximum number of states. When you hit this limit, no more states can be installed until old ones expire.
: 3
Current number of tracks (read-only), which is created by limit option.
: 4096
Maximum number of tracks. When you hit this limit, no more tracks can be installed until old ones expire.
: 1
Enables generation of keepalive packets for keep-state, redirect, or limit rules on TCP sessions. A keepalive is generated to both sides of the connection every 5 seconds for the last 20 seconds of the lifetime of the rule.
: 300
 
: 20
 
: 20
 
: 2
 
: 2
 
: 10
 
: 5
These variables control the lifetime, in seconds, of states and tracks. Upon the initial SYN exchange the lifetime is kept short, then increased after both SYN have been seen, then decreased again during the final FIN exchange or when a RST is received.
: 1
Enables the firewall. Setting this variable to 0 lets you run your machine without firewall even if compiled in.
: 1
When set, the packet exiting from the dummynet(4) pipe is not passed though the firewall again. Otherwise, after a pipe action, the packet is reinjected into the firewall at the next rule.

Note: layer 2 packets coming out of a pipe are never reinjected in the firewall irrespective of the value of this variable.

: 1
Enables verbose messages.
: 0
Limits the number of messages produced by a verbose firewall.
: 0
Controls whether layer-2 packets are passed to ipfw. Default is no.

This Section lists the features that have been introduced in ipfw2 which were not present in ipfw1. We list them in order of the potential impact that they can have in writing your rulesets. You might want to consider using these features in order to write your rulesets in a more efficient way.

Handling of non-IPv4 packets
ipfw1 will silently accept all non-IPv4 packets. ipfw2 will filter all packets (including non-IPv4 ones) according to the ruleset. To achieve the same behaviour as ipfw1 you can use the following as the very first rule in your ruleset:

ipfw add 1 allow layer2 not mac-type ip

The layer2 option might seem redundant, but it is necessary -- packets passed to the firewall from layer3 will not have a MAC header, so the mac-type ip pattern will always fail on them, and the not operator will make this rule into a pass-all.

Address sets
ipfw1 does not support address sets (those in the form addr/masklen{num,num,...}).
Table
ipfw1 does not support table.
Port specifications
ipfw1 only allows one port range when specifying TCP and UDP ports, and is limited to 10 entries instead of the 15 allowed by ipfw2. Also, in ipfw1 you can only specify ports when the rule is requesting tcp or udp packets. With ipfw2 you can put port specifications in rules matching all packets, and the match will be attempted only on those packets carrying protocols which include port identifiers.

Finally, ipfw1 allowed the first port entry to be specified as port:mask where mask can be an arbitrary 16-bit mask. This syntax is of questionable usefulness and it is not supported anymore in ipfw2.

Or-blocks
ipfw1 does not support Or-blocks.
keepalives
ipfw1 does not generate keepalives for stateful sessions. As a consequence, it might cause idle sessions to drop because the lifetime of the states expires.
Sets of rules
ipfw1 does not implement sets of rules.
MAC header filtering and Layer-2 firewalling.
ipfw1 does not implement filtering on MAC header fields, nor is it invoked on packets from () and (). The sysctl variable net.link.ether.ipfw has no effect there.
Options
The following options are not supported in ipfw1

dst-ip, dst-port, layer2, mac, mac-type, src-ip, src-port.

Additionally, the following options are not supported in ipfw1 (RELENG_4) rules:

ipid, iplen, ipprecedence, iptos, ipttl, ipversion, tcpack, tcpseq, tcpwin.

Dummynet options
The following option for dummynet pipes/queues is not supported: noerror.

There are far too many possible uses of ipfw so this Section will only give a small set of examples.

This command adds an entry which denies all tcp packets from to the telnet port of from being forwarded by the host:

ipfw add deny tcp from cracker.evil.org to wolf.tambov.su telnet

This one disallows any connection from the entire cracker's network to my host:

ipfw add deny ip from 123.45.67.0/24 to my.host.org

A first and efficient way to limit access (not using states) is the use of the following rules:

ipfw add allow tcp from any to any established
ipfw add allow tcp from net1 portlist1 to net2 portlist2 setup
ipfw add allow tcp from net3 portlist3 to net3 portlist3 setup
...
ipfw add deny tcp from any to any

The first rule will be a quick match for normal TCP packets, but it will not match the initial SYN packet, which will be matched by the setup rules only for selected source/destination pairs. All other SYN packets will be rejected by the final deny rule.

If you administer one or more subnets, you can take advantage of the ipfw2 syntax to specify address sets and or-blocks and write extremely compact rulesets which selectively enable services to blocks of clients, as below:

goodguys="{ 10.1.2.0/24{20,35,66,18} or 10.2.3.0/28{6,3,11} }"
badguys="10.1.2.0/24{8,38,60}"
ipfw add allow ip from ${goodguys} to any
ipfw add deny ip from ${badguys} to any
... normal policies ...

The ipfw1 syntax would require a separate rule for each IP in the above example.

If you have large number of discrete addresses to block, and the number of addresses to block keep increasing, table can be used as below:

... Initialize the blocked address list using table 0 ...
ipfw table 0 create
ipfw table 0 add 10.0.0.1 10.1.0.1 172.0.0.1
... Block the addresses in table 0 ...
ipfw add deny ip from <0> to any
... Add more addresses to table 0 any time later...
ipfw table 0 add 172.1.0.1
... Expire the addresses unused within the last 24 hours ...
ipfw table 0 expire 86400

In order to protect a site from flood attacks involving fake TCP packets, it is safer to use states:

ipfw add check-state
ipfw add deny tcp from any to any established
ipfw add allow tcp from my-net to any setup keep-state

This will let the firewall install states only for those connection which start with a regular SYN packet coming from the inside of our network. States are checked when encountering the first check-state or keep-state rule. A check-state rule should usually be placed near the beginning of the ruleset to minimize the amount of work scanning the ruleset. Your mileage may vary.

To limit the number of connections a user can open you can use the following type of rules:

ipfw add allow tcp from my-net/24 to any setup limit src-addr 10
ipfw add allow tcp from any to me setup limit src-addr 4

The former (assuming it runs on a gateway) will allow each host on a /24 network to open at most 10 TCP connections. The latter can be placed on a server to make sure that a single client does not use more than 4 simultaneous connections.

: stateful rules can be subject to denial-of-service attacks by a SYN-flood which opens a huge number of states. The effects of such attacks can be partially limited by acting on a set of sysctl(8) variables which control the operation of the firewall.

Here is a good usage of the list command to see accounting records and timestamp information:

ipfw -at list

or in short form without timestamps:

ipfw -a list

which is equivalent to:

ipfw show

Next rule diverts all incoming packets from 192.168.2.0/24 to divert port 5000:

ipfw divert 5000 ip from 192.168.2.0/24 to any in

The following rules show some of the applications of ipfw and dummynet(4) for simulations and the like.

This rule drops random incoming packets with a probability of 5%:

ipfw add prob 0.05 deny ip from any to any in

A similar effect can be achieved making use of dummynet pipes:

ipfw add pipe 10 ip from any to any
ipfw pipe 10 config plr 0.05

We can use pipes to artificially limit bandwidth, e.g. on a machine acting as a router, if we want to limit traffic from local clients on 192.168.2.0/24 we do:

ipfw add pipe 1 ip from 192.168.2.0/24 to any out
ipfw pipe 1 config bw 300Kbit/s queue 50KBytes

note that we use the out modifier so that the rule is not used twice. Remember in fact that ipfw rules are checked both on incoming and outgoing packets.

Should we want to simulate a bidirectional link with bandwidth limitations, the correct way is the following:

ipfw add pipe 1 ip from any to any out
ipfw add pipe 2 ip from any to any in
ipfw pipe 1 config bw 64Kbit/s queue 10Kbytes
ipfw pipe 2 config bw 64Kbit/s queue 10Kbytes

The above can be very useful, e.g. if you want to see how your fancy Web page will look for a residential user who is connected only through a slow link. You should not use only one pipe for both directions, unless you want to simulate a half-duplex medium (e.g. AppleTalk, Ethernet, IRDA). It is not necessary that both pipes have the same configuration, so we can also simulate asymmetric links.

Should we want to verify network performance with the RED queue management algorithm:

ipfw add pipe 1 ip from any to any
ipfw pipe 1 config bw 500Kbit/s queue 100 red 0.002/30/80/0.1

Another typical application of the traffic shaper is to introduce some delay in the communication. This can significantly affect applications which do a lot of Remote Procedure Calls, and where the round-trip-time of the connection often becomes a limiting factor much more than bandwidth:

ipfw add pipe 1 ip from any to any out
ipfw add pipe 2 ip from any to any in
ipfw pipe 1 config delay 250ms bw 1Mbit/s
ipfw pipe 2 config delay 250ms bw 1Mbit/s

Per-flow queueing can be useful for a variety of purposes. A very simple one is counting traffic:

ipfw add pipe 1 tcp from any to any
ipfw add pipe 1 udp from any to any
ipfw add pipe 1 ip from any to any
ipfw pipe 1 config mask all

The above set of rules will create queues (and collect statistics) for all traffic. Because the pipes have no limitations, the only effect is collecting statistics. Note that we need 3 rules, not just the last one, because when ipfw tries to match IP packets it will not consider ports, so we would not see connections on separate ports as different ones.

A more sophisticated example is limiting the outbound traffic on a net with per-host limits, rather than per-network limits:

ipfw add pipe 1 ip from 192.168.2.0/24 to any out
ipfw add pipe 2 ip from any to 192.168.2.0/24 in
ipfw pipe 1 config mask src-ip 0x000000ff bw 200Kbit/s queue 20Kbytes
ipfw pipe 2 config mask dst-ip 0x000000ff bw 200Kbit/s queue 20Kbytes

SETS OF RULES

To add a set of rules atomically, e.g. set 18:

ipfw disable set 18
ipfw add NN set 18 ... # repeat as needed
ipfw enable set 18

To delete a set of rules atomically the command is simply:

ipfw delete set 18

To test a ruleset and disable it and regain control if something goes wrong:

ipfw disable set 18
ipfw add NN set 18 ... # repeat as needed
ipfw enable set 18 ; echo done; sleep 30 && ipfw disable set 18

Here if everything goes well, you press control-C before the "sleep" terminates, and your ruleset will be left active. Otherwise, e.g. if you cannot access your box, the ruleset will be disabled after the sleep terminates thus restoring the previous situation.

cpp(1), m4(1), divert(4), dummynet(4), ip(4), ipfirewall(4), protocols(5), services(5), init(8), kldload(8), reboot(8), sysctl(8), syslogd(8)

The ipfw utility first appeared in FreeBSD 2.0. dummynet(4) was introduced in FreeBSD 2.2.8. Stateful extensions were introduced in FreeBSD 4.0, and were rewritten in DragonFly 4.9. Table was introduced in DragonFly 4.9. ipfw2 was introduced in Summer 2002.

Ugen J. S. Antsilevich,
Poul-Henning Kamp,
Alex Nash,
Archie Cobbs,
Luigi Rizzo.

API based upon code written by Daniel Boulet for BSDI.

Work on dummynet(4) traffic shaper supported by Akamba Corp.

The syntax has grown over the years and sometimes it might be confusing. Unfortunately, backward compatibility prevents cleaning up mistakes made in the definition of the syntax.

Misconfiguring the firewall can put your computer in an unusable state, possibly shutting down network services and requiring console access to regain control of it.

Incoming packet fragments diverted by divert or tee are reassembled before delivery to the socket. The action used on those packet is the one from the rule which matches the first fragment of the packet.

Packets that match a tee rule should not be immediately accepted, but should continue going through the rule list. This may be fixed in a later version.

Packets diverted to userland, and then reinserted by a userland process (such as natd(8)) will lose various packet attributes, including their source interface. If a packet is reinserted in this manner, later rules may be incorrectly applied, making the order of divert rules in the rule sequence very important.

January 16, 2018 DragonFly-5.6.1