The Linux Ninja

Patrick McHardy announced the release of the first public version of NFTables on the NetFilter development list and Linux kernel net development list. From the announcement:

The kernel provides a netlink configuration interface, as well as runtime ruleset evaluation using a small classification language interpreter. libnl contains the low-level functions for communicating with the kernel, the nftables frontend is what the user interacts with.

Patrick  goes on to give in depth information on the new implementation and highlighting the differences between the new NFTables interface and the existing NetFilter interface. I recommend at least skimming over the post if you use IPTables/NetFilter on a regular basis so you can see what may be coming down the line.