What is APF firewall?
The full form of APF firewall is Advanced Policy Firewall. Advanced Policy Firewall is a policy based iptables firewall system. It is very easy to configure and also use. Developed by R-fx networks, APF is easy to deploy on several linux based server environments as it is available in tar.gz format and RPM formats.
APF is known for being more easy, more secure, and more affordable firewall solution available today.
APF is ideal for management of inbound and outbound network traffic as it is quite easy to configure the ports which you want to allow or not allow access to, set the protocols you want to allow, and also to configure the filters you want to set for the firewall.
Features of APF firewall :
1. Easy to understand configuration file with lots of comments.
2. Detailed inward and outward network filtering
3. Outward network filtering based on user ID and application.
4. If user are close with netfilter then they can make their own rules in any of the policy files
5. Plugging is possible and also prepare to use of QoS algorithms offered by the Linux.
6. Inward and outward network interfaces can be independently configured
7. Global tcp or udp port and icmp filtering with various filters (drop, reject, prohibit)
8. You have the options to filter known p2p applications, you can also filter private and reserved IP address space. If you want to filter implicit blocks of indent service, you have that option too.
9. You can configure rules for every ip on the system with variables to easily import settings.
10. Debug mode provided for testing new features and configuration setups.
11. Fast load feature that allows for 1000+ rules to load in under 1 second
APF is an open source software released under GNU general public license. It can be downloaded for free and is very fast to install. It has proved to be a very powerful and effective firewall for server protection.
