Networking & Firewall (Ss/Netstat/Iptables/Nftables/Curl)

Stop missing silent packet drops at the iptables counter

🧩 The Challenge

You keep staring at your firewall rules, certain they aren’t blocking your traffic, but the packets just vanish into the void. It’s maddening when you’ve checked the syntax ten times and the service still won’t connect.

💡 The Fix

Start checking the packet and byte counters attached to each specific chain rule to see if your traffic is actually hitting the block. It’s the only way to know if your logic is being ignored or if the traffic is hitting a different rule entirely.

iptables -L -n -v

⚙️ Why It Works

This flags the output to include the packet counts for each rule so you can see which specific line is incrementing whenever you try to connect. Seeing those numbers tick up confirms exactly which rule is killing your connection.

🚀 Pro-Tip: Use the -Z flag with your command if you need to reset the counters to zero and start debugging fresh.

Linux Tips & Tricks | © ngelinux.com | 9/8/2026