[TriLUG] Firewall/Masquerading on RH 7.1

[Tom Bryan]

I'm running Red Hat 7.1 on my machines at home.  I only 
have one (functioning) modem, and I was planning to set 
up IP Masquerading.  

I have the 2.4.x kernel that was included with Red Hat 7.1. 
I configured a few simple firewall rules with Red Hat 7.1, 
but from what I can tell, that firewall is using ipchains.  
I read the Firewall HOWTO, so now I feel pretty comfortable 
with ipchains.  Looking at the newer IP Masquerade HOWTO, 
there's a lot of information about IPTABLES on 2.4.x kernels.  

So, I have one question...
Given that I have a very simple configuration (3 machines, one 
phone modem), and I simply want to make sure that the machine 
on the modem denies most incoming traffic from the modem (ppp0) 
and that the other machines can share the modem with IP MASQ, 
should I read all about iptables and move my firewall rules 
(very simple at the moment) over to iptables?  Or should I stick 
with ipchains?  Basically, is there any compelling reason for 
me to go through the trouble of moving to iptables if I just 
want transparent SSH and web access to the public network from 
my home network without opening up my network to problems like 
the Ramen worm, which I got over my phone modem earlier this 
year :-p?

Thanks,
----Tom