ipchains is the user-space portion of the new Linux packet filter code, which was introduced into the mainstream kernel in version

IP firewall administration.

Linux. It is a rewrite of Linux's previous IPv4 firewalling code, ipfwadm. In Linux 2.2, ipchains is required to administer the IP packet filters. ipchains was written because the older IPv4 firewall code used in Linux 2.0 did not work with IP fragments and didn't allow for specification of protocols other than TCP, UDP, and ICMP.