ipset
Ranked 8 of 8 firewalls by recommenders
Linux tool for grouping large numbers of IP addresses into sets, so iptables can block known bad addresses and regions without a rule per address.
Linux tool for grouping large numbers of IP addresses into sets, so iptables can block known bad addresses and regions without a rule per address.
5 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 5
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 5 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Blocklists instead of per-IP rules
“People might not know about ipset - dont use individual rules in iptables.”
Comment from 8 Apr 2026 in “LLM scraper bots are overloading acme.com's HTTPS server” “You'd probably want script to populate a "hash:net" ipset instead”
Comment from 11 Nov 2025 in “DNS Provider Quad9 Sees Piracy Blocking Orders as "Existential Threat"” “add blocks of IPs to a blocklist (eg. ipset on Linux)”
Comment from 18 Nov 2025 in “Cloudflare Global Network experiencing issues” Blocks malicious IPs and regions
“IPset and GeoIP banning of known malicious IPs and regions (using block-lists) also keeps the footprint of "unwanted" use very, very small”
Comment from 28 Jun 2026 in “Choosing a Public DNS Resolver” “add blocks of IPs to a blocklist (eg. ipset on Linux)”
Comment from 18 Nov 2025 in “Cloudflare Global Network experiencing issues”
Other firewalls people recommend
The four most recommended other firewalls, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| pf (OpenBSD Packet Filter) | 53 | 7 | 88% | 11 | — | Approved |
| nftables | 29 | 10 | 74% | 8 | — | Approved |
| LuLu firewall | 27 | 3 | 90% | 9 | — | Approved |
| iptables | 15 | 22 | 41% | 7 | — | — |
| ipsetThis page | 5 | 0 | 100% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
All 5 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“ipsets can handle vast numbers of addresses”
“IPset and GeoIP banning of known malicious IPs and regions (using block-lists) also keeps the footprint of "unwanted" use very, very small”
“People might not know about ipset - dont use individual rules in iptables.”
“add blocks of IPs to a blocklist (eg. ipset on Linux)”
“You'd probably want script to populate a "hash:net" ipset instead”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.