Hello .. would just like to clarify this with an iptables guru:

Should an ESTABLISHED,RELATED rule appear first in the rule list, or a "specific" rule?

such as:

iptables -A INPUT -i eth1 -p tcp --dport 8000 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -i eth1 -p udp --dport 27960 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -i eth1 -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT

Should the ESTABLISHED,RELATED rule become first or last in the ruleset? Because it gets the most hits (when i do iptables -vL) so does it make sense to put it at the top??

Please note this is not my ruleset, nor is it complete, just using it to illustrate my question.

Cheers

I'm no iptables expert by any means, but my understanding is that as soon as iptables finds a rule that matches, it stops looking and goes on to the next packet. So in the example you've got, if you put ESTABLISHED,RELATED rule at the top, iptables would spend less time processing rules. Personally, I have pretty broad rules early in my table and then get more specific.

Yes, this is what I thought ...

Cheers