Both Iptables and IPVS (IP Virtual Server) are two Linux-based networking tools with different purposes.
Iptables
Linux based operating systems have a powerful firewall utility called iptables.
At the packet level, it can be used to define rules and policies for network traffic management.
Iptables filters, alters and sends packets on various criteria such as source/destination IP address, port numbers, protocol type among others.
Common applications include Firewalling rules, Network Address Translation (NAT), packet mangling and other network tasks.
The framework is managed by Netfilter, which runs in Linux kernel.
It is mainly used to ensure that network traffic is controlled and secured at host level.
IPVS (IP Virtual Server)
Advanced load balancing & packet forwarding features are provided by the IPVS Kernel module for Linux.
This module operates at transport layer (Layer 4) of OSI model.
Round Robin, Least Connections, Weighted Round Robin etc. are implemented within IPVS as algorithms to distribute incoming network connections among a pool of backend servers.
It’s widely used in high traffic environments like web servers, proxy servers etc. because it helps to scale up operations through massive scalability and fault tolerance with high availability capabilities.
In summary, while both iptables and IPVS are essential networking tools for Linux systems, iptables is primarily used for firewalling and packet manipulation at the host level, while IPVS is used for advanced load balancing and packet forwarding at the network level.