Book Image

Linux for Networking Professionals

By : Rob VandenBrink
1 (1)
Book Image

Linux for Networking Professionals

1 (1)
By: Rob VandenBrink

Overview of this book

As Linux continues to gain prominence, there has been a rise in network services being deployed on Linux for cost and flexibility reasons. If you are a networking professional or an infrastructure engineer involved with networks, extensive knowledge of Linux networking is a must. This book will guide you in building a strong foundation of Linux networking concepts. The book begins by covering various major distributions, how to pick the right distro, and basic Linux network configurations. You'll then move on to Linux network diagnostics, setting up a Linux firewall, and using Linux as a host for network services. You'll discover a wide range of network services, why they're important, and how to configure them in an enterprise environment. Finally, as you work with the example builds in this Linux book, you'll learn to configure various services to defend against common attacks. As you advance to the final chapters, you’ll be well on your way towards building the underpinnings for an all-Linux datacenter. By the end of this book, you'll be able to not only configure common Linux network services confidently, but also use tried-and-tested methodologies for future Linux installations.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
1
Section 1: Linux Basics
4
Section 2: Linux as a Network Node and Troubleshooting Platform
8
Section 3: Linux Network Services

Summary

While many distributions still have iptables as their default firewall, over time we can expect to see that situation shift to the newer nftables architecture. It will take some years before this transition is complete, and even then the odd "surprise" will pop up, as you find hosts that you didn't have in your inventory, or devices that you didn't realize were Linux-based computers – Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as thermostats, clocks, or elevator controls come to mind. This chapter has gotten us started with both architectures.

With roughly 150 pages in the man pages for nftables and 20 for iptables, that documentation is essentially a standalone book all on its own. We've scratched the surface of the tool, but in a modern data center, defining an ingress filter on each host is the most common use you'll see for nftables. However, as you explore the security requirements in your data center, outbound and transit rules may certainly...