Filtering Bridges
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# 4 Enabling the Bridge

At this point, to enable the bridge, you have to execute the following commands (having the shrewdness to replace the names of the two network interfaces `fxp0` and `xl0` with your own ones):

    # sysctl net.link.ether.bridge.config=fxp0:0,xl0:0
    # sysctl net.link.ether.bridge.ipfw=1
    # sysctl net.link.ether.bridge.enable=1

The first row specifies which interfaces should be activated by the bridge, the second one will enable the firewall on the bridge and finally the third one will enable the bridge.

> Note: If you have FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE or previous the sysctl variables are spelled differently. See bridge(4) for details.

At this point you should be able to insert the machine between two sets of hosts without compromising any communication abilities between them. If so, the next step is to add the `net.link.ether.bridge.`[blah]`=`[blah]`` portions of these rows to the `/etc/sysctl.conf` file, in order to have them execute at startup.

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Final Preparation |  | Configuring The Firewall