Overhead with ipchains

[Kurt Wall]

Scribbling feverishly on April 19, Joel Hammer managed to emit:
> I use ipchains on my firewall.

Sorry to hear that.

> I have a lot of rules in it, some no longer needed. 

So, naturally, I suggest dropping the ones you don't need.

> Is there any performance hit to your transfer speed (I am on a cable modem)
> with ipchains due to the number of defined rules?

Because ipchains happens in the kernel, you'd have to have some
serious traffic and an awful lot of rules before you'd notice much
difference. I'd expect you to encounter other problems before you'd
see any significant performance hit.

> Along the same lines, is it significantly more efficient to have one rule
> blocking several ports rather than several rules, each blocking one port?
> Any insight appreciated.

David's answer addresses this better than I can, so I'll let his
explanation stand unmodified.

Kurt
-- 
Perfect day for scrubbing the floor and other exciting things.