17.1 An Introduction to firewalld
Originally developed for Red Hat-based Linux distributions, the firewalld service uses a set of rules to control incoming network traffic and define which traffic is to be blocked and which is to be allowed to pass through to the system and is built on top of a more complex firewall tool named iptables.
The firewalld system provides a flexible way to manage incoming traffic. The firewall could, for example, be configured to block traffic arriving from a specific external IP address, or to prevent all traffic arriving on a particular TCP/IP port. Rules may also be defined to forward incoming traffic to different systems or to act as an internet gateway to protect other computers on a network.
In keeping with common security practices, a default firewalld installation is configured to block all access with the exception of SSH remote login and the DHCP service used by the system to obtain a dynamic IP address (both of which are essential if the...
