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Ipmasq User's Manual
Chapter 1 - About ipmasq


1.1 Purpose

ipmasq is a system to securely initialize IP Masquerade for use as a forwarding firewall. IP Masquerade is a feature of the Linux kernel that allows an entire network of computers to be connected to another network (usually the Internet) with only one network address on that other network. IP Masquerade is often referred to as NAT (Network Address Translation) on other platforms.


1.2 History

ipmasq started life in the author's dorm room as an instance of the strong ruleset described in the ipmasq mini-HOWTO. This was christened the 1.x series, as it grew it became more robust. However, it only supported the 2.0 kernels, as it used ipfwadm, and hardcoded the author's dorm room network.

The 2.x series of ipmasq saw its generalization via a configuration file and its introduction into the Debian distribution.

The 3.0 release of ipmasq was the first release suitable for use with pppd. It received some much needed intelligence about interfaces and routes, which allowed it to cope with changing network connections. Also, version 3.0 introduced support for the ipchains interface which appears in the 2.2 and the later 2.1 series kernels.

Later releases of the 3.x series added other features. Version 3.1.0 added the flexible rules framework, while version 3.3.0 added infrastructure for loading of ip_masq_* kernel modules.

This document first appeared in version 3.4.0 of ipmasq.

The 3.5 series of ipmasq added support for debconf, Debian's next-generation configuration management system. It also added support for the netfilter kernel interface found in later 2.3 and 2.4 kernels. For more information about netfilter, please see http://netfilter.kernelnotes.org/.


1.3 Kernel Requirements

ipmasq requires the kernel be built with masquerading support. The specific kernel options for each major kernel revision are listed below.

Kernel versions 2.0.0 through 2.1.100

Kernels 2.1.101 through later 2.3 releases

Later 2.3 kernel versions through 2.4


1.4 More Resources

More information about IP Masquerade can be found at the Linux IP Masquerade Resource, http://ipmasq.cjb.net/.


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Ipmasq User's Manual

Brian Bassett brianb@debian.org