NETGEAR FVS124G manual Firewall Protection and Content Filtering Overview

Chapter 6 Firewall Protection and Content Filtering

This chapter describes how to use the content filtering features of the FVS124G ProSafe VPN Firewall 25 with 4 Gigabit LAN and Dual WAN Ports to protect your network. These features can be found by clicking on the Content Filtering heading in the Main Menu of the browser interface.

Firewall Protection and Content Filtering Overview

The FVS124G ProSafe VPN Firewall 25 with 4 Gigabit LAN and Dual WAN Ports provides you with Web content filtering options, plus browsing activity reporting and instant alerts via e-mail. Parents and network administrators can establish restricted access policies based on time-of-day, web addresses and web address keywords. You can also block Internet access by applications and services, such as chat or games.

A firewall is a special category of router that protects one network (the “trusted” network, such as your LAN) from another (the “untrusted” network, such as the Internet), while allowing communication between the two.

A firewall incorporates the functions of a NAT (Network Address Translation) router, while adding features for dealing with a hacker intrusion or attack, and for controlling the types of traffic that can flow between the two networks. Unlike simple Internet sharing NAT routers, a firewall uses a process called stateful packet inspection to protect your network from attacks and intrusions. NAT performs a very limited stateful inspection in that it considers whether the incoming packet is in response to an outgoing request, but true Stateful Packet Inspection goes far beyond NAT.

Using Rules to Block or Allow Specific Kinds of Traffic

Firewall rules are used to block or allow specific traffic passing through from one side to the other. Inbound rules (WAN to LAN) restrict access by outsiders to private resources, selectively allowing only specific outside users to access specific resources. Outbound rules (LAN to WAN) determine what outside resources local users can have access to.

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202-10085-01, March 2005