diff --git a/Shorewall/Perl/Shorewall/Chains.pm b/Shorewall/Perl/Shorewall/Chains.pm
index e25dc28b3..e0050edc8 100644
--- a/Shorewall/Perl/Shorewall/Chains.pm
+++ b/Shorewall/Perl/Shorewall/Chains.pm
@@ -248,6 +248,7 @@ our $iprangematch;
 our $chainseq;
 our $idiotcount;
 our $idiotcount1;
+our $warningcount;
 
 our $global_variables;
 
@@ -358,6 +359,7 @@ sub initialize( $ ) {
     $global_variables   = 0;
     $idiotcount         = 0;
     $idiotcount1        = 0;
+    $warningcount       = 0;
 
 }
 
@@ -369,7 +371,7 @@ sub process_comment() {
 	( $comment = $currentline ) =~ s/^\s*COMMENT\s*//;
 	$comment =~ s/\s*$//;
     } else {
-	warning_message "COMMENT ignored -- requires comment support in iptables/Netfilter";
+	warning_message "COMMENTs ignored -- require comment support in iptables/Netfilter" unless $warningcount++;
     }
 }
 
diff --git a/Shorewall/changelog.txt b/Shorewall/changelog.txt
index 68eb0e104..182fdcf86 100644
--- a/Shorewall/changelog.txt
+++ b/Shorewall/changelog.txt
@@ -12,6 +12,8 @@ Changes in Shorewall 4.4.4
 
 6)  Implement ZONE2ZONE option.
 
+7)  Suppress duplicate COMMENT warnings.
+
 Changes in Shorewall 4.4.3
 
 1)  Move Debian INITLOG initialization to /etc/default/shorewall
diff --git a/Shorewall/releasenotes.txt b/Shorewall/releasenotes.txt
index 4119de7c3..7f69bd621 100644
--- a/Shorewall/releasenotes.txt
+++ b/Shorewall/releasenotes.txt
@@ -262,6 +262,12 @@ None.
     value "-" (e.g., ZONE2ZONE="-") which causes Shorewall to separate
     the two parts of the name with a hyphen (e.g., foo123-bar).
 
+5)  Only one instance of this warning is now generated; previously, one
+    instance of a similar warning was generated for each COMMENT
+    encountered.
+
+	COMMENTs ignored -- require comment support in iptables/Netfilter
+
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                 N E W   F E A T U R E S   I N   4 . 4 . 0
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