A different way of doing this, that is more efficient, is to set the hashsize option to the ip_conntrack module once this is loaded. Under normal circumstances ip_conntrack_max equals 8 * hashsize. In other words, setting the hashsize to 4096 will result in ip_conntrack_max being set to 32768 conntrack entries. An example of this would be:

work3:/home/blueflux# modprobe ip_conntrack hashsize=4096

work3:/home/blueflux# cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_conntrack_max

32768

work3:/home/blueflux#

User-land states

As you have seen, packets may take on several different states within the kernel itself, depending on what protocol we are talking about. However, outside the kernel, we only have the 4 states as described previously. These states can mainly be used in conjunction with the state match which will then be able to match packets based on their current connection tracking state. The valid states are NEW, ESTABLISHED, RELATED and INVALID. The following table will briefly explain each possible state.

Table 7-1. User-land states

State	Explanation
NEW	The NEW state tells us that the packet is the first packet that we see. This means that the first packet that the conntrack module sees, within a specific connection, will be matched. For example, if we see a SYN packet and it is the first packet in a connection that we see, it will match. However, the packet may as well not be a SYN packet and still be considered NEW. This may lead to certain problems in some instances, but it may also be extremely helpful when we need to pick up lost connections from other firewalls, or when a connection has already timed out, but in reality is not closed.
ESTABLISHED	The ESTABLISHED state has seen traffic in both directions and will then continuously match those packets. ESTABLISHED connections are fairly easy to understand. The only requirement to get into an ESTABLISHED state is that one host sends a packet, and that it later on gets a reply from the other host. The NEW state will upon receipt of the reply packet to or through the firewall change to the ESTABLISHED state. ICMP reply messages can also be considered as ESTABLISHED, if we created a packet that in turn generated the reply ICMP message.
RELATED	The RELATED state is one of the more tricky states. A connection is considered RELATED when it is related to another already ESTABLISHED connection. What this means, is that for a connection to be considered as RELATED, we must first have a connection that is considered ESTABLISHED. The ESTABLISHED connection will then spawn a connection outside of the main connection. The newly spawned connection will then be considered RELATED, if the conntrack module is able to understand that it is RELATED. Some good examples of connections that can be considered as RELATED are the FTP-data connections that are considered RELATED to the FTP control port, and the DCC connections issued through IRC. This could be used to allow ICMP error messages, FTP transfers and DCC's to work properly through the firewall. Do note that most TCP protocols and some UDP protocols that rely on this mechanism are quite complex and send connection information within the payload of the TCP or UDP data segments, and hence require special helper modules to be correctly understood.
INVALID	The INVALID state means that the packet can't be identified or that it does not have any state. This may be due to several reasons, such as the system running out of memory or ICMP error messages that do not respond to any known connections. Generally, it is a good idea to DROP everything in this state.
UNTRACKED	This is the UNTRACKED state. In brief, if a packet is marked within the raw table with the NOTRACK target, then that packet will show up as UNTRACKED in the state machine. This also means that all RELATED connections will not be seen, so some caution must be taken when dealing with the UNTRACKED connections since the state machine will not be able to see related ICMP messages et cetera.

These states can be used together with the --state match to match packets based on their connection tracking state. This is what makes the state machine so incredibly strong and efficient for our firewall. Previously, we often had to open up all ports above 1024 to let all traffic back into our local networks again. With the state machine in place this is not necessary any longer, since we can now just open up the firewall for return traffic and not for all kinds of other traffic.

TCP connections

In this section and the upcoming ones, we will take a closer look at the states and how they are handled for each of the three basic protocols TCP, UDP and ICMP. Also, we will take a closer look at how connections are handled per default, if they can not be classified as either of these three protocols. We have chosen to start out with the TCP protocol since it is a stateful protocol in itself, and has a lot of interesting details with regard to the state machine in iptables.

A TCP connection is always initiated with the 3-way handshake, which establishes and negotiates the actual connection over which data will be sent. The whole session is begun with a SYN packet, then a SYN/ACK packet and finally an ACK packet to acknowledge the whole session establishment. At this point the connection is established and able to start sending data. The big problem is, how does connection tracking hook up into this? Quite simply really.

As far as the user is concerned, connection tracking works basically the same for all connection types. Have a look at the picture below to see exactly what state the stream enters during the different stages of the connection. As you can see, the connection tracking code does not really follow the flow of the TCP connection, from the users viewpoint. Once it has seen one packet(the SYN), it considers the connection as NEW. Once it sees the return packet(SYN/ACK), it considers the connection as ESTABLISHED. If you think about this a second, you will understand why. With this particular implementation, you can allow NEW and ESTABLISHED packets to leave your local network, only allow ESTABLISHED connections back, and that will work perfectly. Conversely, if the connection tracking machine were to consider the whole connection establishment as NEW, we would never really be able to stop outside connections to our local network, since we would have to allow NEW packets back in again. To make things more complicated, there are a number of other internal states that are used for TCP connections inside the kernel, but which are not available for us in User-land. Roughly, they follow the state standards specified within RFC 793 - Transmission Control Protocol on pages 21-23. We will consider these in more detail further along in this section.

As you can see, it is really quite simple, seen from the user's point of view. However, looking at the whole construction from the kernel's point of view, it's a little more difficult. Let's look at an example. Consider exactly how the connection states change in the /proc/net/ip_conntrack table. The first state is reported upon receipt of the first SYN packet in a connection.

tcp 6 117 SYN_SENT src=192.168.1.5 dst=192.168.1.35 sport=1031 \

dport=23 [UNREPLIED] src=192.168.1.35 dst=192.168.1.5 sport=23 \

dport=1031 use=1

As you can see from the above entry, we have a precise state in which a SYN packet has been sent, (the SYN_SENT flag is set), and to which as yet no reply has been sent (witness the [UNREPLIED] flag). The next internal state will be reached when we see another packet in the other direction.