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<TITLE>Linux 2.4 Packet Filtering HOWTO: Who the hell are you, and why are you playing with my kernel?</TITLE>
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<H2><A NAME="s4">4.</A> <A HREF="packet-filtering-HOWTO.html#toc4">Who the hell are you, and why are you playing with my kernel?</A></H2>
<P>I'm Rusty Russell; the Linux IP Firewall maintainer and just another
working coder who happened to be in the right place at the right time.
I wrote ipchains (see
<A HREF="packet-filtering-HOWTO-3.html#filter-linux">How Do I Packet Filter Under Linux?</A> above for due credit to the people who did the
actual work), and learnt enough to get packet filtering right this
time. I hope.</P>
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<A HREF="http://www.watchguard.com">WatchGuard</A>, an excellent
firewall company who sell the really nice plug-in Firebox, offered to
pay me to do nothing, so I could spend all my time writing this stuff,
and maintaining my previous stuff. I predicted 6 months, and it took
12, but I felt by the end that it had been done Right. Many rewrites,
a hard-drive crash, a laptop being stolen, a couple of corrupted
filesystems and one broken screen later, here it is.</P>
<P>While I'm here, I want to clear up some people's misconceptions: I am
no kernel guru. I know this, because my kernel work has brought me
into contact with some of them: David S. Miller, Alexey Kuznetsov,
Andi Kleen, Alan Cox. However, they're all busy doing the deep magic,
leaving me to wade in the shallow end where it's safe.</P>
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