Connection Tracking

Connection Tracking

Contents #

The tracking information is made available through the conntrack match extension.

Connection Tracking States #

  • ESTABLISHED The connection has already seen packets going in both directions. See

also SEEN_REPLY status.

  • INVALID The packet doesn’t belong to any tracked connections.
  • NEW The packet is starting a new connection or is part of a

connection that hasn’t yet seen packets in both directions.

  • RELATED The packet is starting a new connection, but the new

connection is related to an existing connection (such as the data connection for an FTP transfer).

Connection Tracking Status #

The connection tracking logic maintains three bits of status information associated with each connection. Table bellow con- tains a list of these status codes as they are named in the conntrack match extension (the –ctstatus option).

  • ASSURED For TCP connections, indicates the TCP connection setup has been completed. For UDP connections, indicates it looks like a UDP stream to the kernel.
  • EXPECTED Indicates the connection was expected.
  • SEEN_REPLY Indicates that packets have gone in both directions.