Replacing iptables for greater efficiency and capability, nftables is often implemented as a backend to iptables as an intermediate step. This allows tooling and practice against iptables to persist uninterrupted.
🗒️ Running
iptables -Vwill note '(nf_tables)' if nftables is setup as the backend. In this case, the 'iptables-nft' package will also be installed.
The nftables service will appear as 'inactive (dead)', as it is only active to affect configuration changes. This is because nftabels functionality is implemented as a kernel module, and triggers on network events.