IPTABLES restarting and possible consequences

Question

I have iptables and masquerading enabled through this:

iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE

How can I revert this rule? i.e I want to disable the masquerade.

I am afraid to test..because if I fail..there would be a lot of problems (for example lose ssh)

Also can I restart iptables hoping that it wouldn't start rejecting all conns.

Answer 1

Use -D to delete a rule from the selected chain:

iptables -t nat -D POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE

Answer 2

If you delete a rule, that functionality will be gone.

So any SSH sessions that depend on that rule will also disconnect.