[ Thanks to steve
hill for this link. ]
“For example, one of the most popular iptables GUI out
there is Firestarter. It is ubiquitous, it ships with all major
Linux distributions. Firestarter is nice simple GUI and it does the
job right. However it is not very well suited for complex iptables
policies because it can generate only very basic iptables rules.
Also Firestarter can only manage the iptables policy on the same
machine where it is running. As you can see, even though there is
overlap in the functions between Firestarter and Firewall Builder,
these tools are really intended for different audiences.“There are also several Open Source projects that aim to provide
a universal multi-platform firewall configuration language. One
example is HLFH (High Level Firewall Language). The administrator
can define firewall policy rules in terms of this abstract language
and then translate them into a configuration of the target
firewall. Generally, this is the same concept that Firewall Builder
is based on, but with HLFH the user needs to learn yet another
language and manage the firewall in a cycle similar to software
development, where you write the code, compile it and then test and
debug it.”