One of the nifty things about FreeBSD's kernel is that it will limit closed port RST responses, which, in layman's terms, just means that if someone repeatedly hits a port that's closed, the kernel won't respond to all of the requests.
You generally get something like this in the system log:
kernel: Limiting closed port RST response from 211 to 200 packets/sec
rkrhkr kernel: Limiting closed port RST response from203 to 200 packets/sec
In certain situations, this functionality might be undesirable. For example, if you're running an IDS like snort or a vulnerability scanner like nessus, these responses might be helpful. If you want to disable this functionality, just add the following to /etc/sysctl.conf:
net.inet.tcp.blackhole=2
net.inet.udp.blackhole=1
3x for your blog. Useful information for me.
Thanks man! After 4 years of posted, this helped my life!! Much useful information to me too!!