On Tuesday 30 April 2002 8:58 pm, Andrew Greenburg wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I've been using an iptables-based firewall at the office for several
> months, and all of a sudden today I started having problems with opening
> network connections to UNIX hosts. The port opens, and then it sits there
> for about 60 seconds before it actually responds. After that, the
> connection works normally. My tcp/ip connections to NT-based servers work
> fine. There have been absolutely no changes to the configuration of the
> netfilter box.
>
> Any ideas?

Whenever I hear this sort of problem, I normally say "ident lookup".

I guess in your case (since you've had a working netfilter box for some 
months with no recent changes), the question has to be - are the Unix boxes 
ones which you;ve previously connected to without these delays, and have 
there been any changes to those servers ?   (Specifically, has anyone 
installed TCP-wrappers on them ?)

To investigate the problem, it might be a good idea to put a logging rule on 
your firewall (in the INPUT chain if you;re masquerading the clients behind 
the firewall's own IP address; in the FORWARD chain if you're not) to see if 
you;re getting any packets destined for TCP port 113 - the ident daemon.

If you don't want to change the firewall, put a packet sniffer on the outside 
(ethereal would do nicely) and see if you're getting ident requests back from 
the servers with the delays.


Hope this helps,



Antony.

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