Firewall in RH 7.1 w/ 2.4.17 Kernel

basically i would like to setup a Firewall
using IPchains with the 2.4.17 Kernel however
i can not Figure out how to make ipchains compatible with this kernel? any suggestions or thoughts on this? reason i want to use ipchains is i have a script setup for port scanning and blocking but only works w/ ipchains, thanks for your help.