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In our age of the global Internet, with computers permanently exposed to danger from hackers, it is more important than ever to protect your own systems against attack. The firewall has become a first line of defense for the network. Luckily for Linux users, your favorite free operating system has an integrated firewall, and more developers are starting to provide a usable firewall configuration as part of the minimal installation of their Linux systems. This removes the need for users to invest heavily in security – in contrast to what users of other, more vulnerable systems face.

Linux has an enormous range of firewall systems, from application-oriented firewalls such as Firestarter or FWBuilder, which mainly rely on the default security systems in Linux, IPTables/ Netfilter, through turnkey firewall distributions that boot from CD or DVD, such as IPCop, which typically integrate some kind of server functionality, to expensive commercial solutions such as CheckPoint, InJoy, or gateProtect.

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