firewall on FreeBSD

[Alex Zbyslaw]

Giorgos Keramidas wrote:

>On 2005-06-26 00:40, Alex Zbyslaw <xfb52 at dial.pipex.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>Paul Schmehl wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>pf on freebsd does support the "quick" keyword.  The "default"
>>>firewall, ipfw, does not.
>>>      
>>>
>>This makes no sense to me.  The two firewalls work very differently.
>>
>>[...]
>>
>You describe very nicely the way rules are matched by two of the three
>different firewalls available on FreeBSD.  The description, being very
>correct, *does* make sense.
>
>Why do you say that ``This makes no sense to you''
>  
>
Maybe I'm misreading something, or taking it out of context, but the 
statement "ipfw does not support the quick keyword" makes no sense to 
me.  For me, it implies that somehow ipfw could (or even should) support 
the quick keyword, and that is nonsensical.  The way ipfw rules work 
there is not only no need to support a quick keyword, but no point in 
supporting one because all relevant matches are already quick, by 
definition.

Maybe I'm being overly pedantic, but if I had stumbled across this 
message in an archive search, and knew nothing about FreeBSD firewalls, 
I could easily take it to mean that ipfw was lacking a feature with 
respect to pf when, in fact, it wasn't.  (There may be plenty of other 
reasons for picking one firewall or the other, but the "lack" of a quick 
keyword in ipfw isn't one of them).

Am *I* making any more sense, now?

--Alex