I have noticed that nmap gives me info not of open ports on an interface but on services that are running. $ nmap 192.168.0.1 Starting Nmap 4.11 Interesting ports on COR (192.168.0.1): Not shown: 1678 closed ports PORT STATE SERVICE 21/tcp open ftp 80/tcp open http While in iptables all ports are denied. And a connection can not be established to that interface till I allow it in iptables. Why is it? Is there a way to know the open ports - the ones I can connect to, meaning they are allowed for connection?