2nd Firewall session, take 2

So, we had the session last evening, and from my point of view as someone teaching I am happy. My colleagues were asking good questions (many which I was unable to answer, that's how good the questions were) and they even pointed out mistakes I was making (which shows that they were learning).

Khaled from El Sakia had provided the computer lab with a whiteboard, and this proved incredibly useful; thanks Khaled.

I gave the first segment which was nothing more than a review of what constitutes an iptables rule in the following manner:

1. What rule? (-A)
2. What kind of packet? (matches)
3. What to do with this kind of packet? (-j)

which seemed to clarify things a bit.

We then proceeded to evaluate a well-written firewall script which created six custom chains and revisited the concept of default-deny versus default-allow.

After this we had a break, and Mohamed Sameer took over after that to do the segment related to networks; NATing, forwarding, &c. I had to leave before this (was a little worn out) but I hope they did well.

Where do we go from here?

1. I proposed to the students that next, they each pick an iptables module and teach their colleagues about it.
2. After this, they should pick a coordinator and form themselves into a Firewalls Teaching Group so that they can teach other people when we open EGLUG courses to the public (hopefully) in August.

Thanks to the people who attended for their patience with me and their interest, and thanks to Ramez Hanna and Mohamed Sameer for helping out.

And, as always, thanks to Mr. El Sawy and Khaled for the great support.

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