SonicWALL 3 manual Lan Wan, 127

C22H A P T E R

Setting Up the WLAN Using the

Wireless Wizard and Monitoring

Your WLAN

The SonicWALL TZ 50 Wireless/TZ 150 Wireless/TZ 70 Wireless support two wireless protocols called IEEE 802.11b and 802.11g, commonly known as Wi-Fi, and sends data via radio transmissions. The TZ 150 Wireless/TZ 170 Wireless combines three networking components to offer a fully secure wireless firewall: an Access Point, a secure wireless gateway, and a stateful firewall with flexible NAT and VPN termination and initiation capabilities. With this combination, the TZ 50 Wireless/TZ 150 Wireless/TZ 170 Wireless offer the flexibility of wireless without compromising network security.

Typically, the TZ 50 Wireless/TZ 150 Wireless/TZ 170 Wireless is the access point for your wireless LAN and serves as the central access point for computers on your LAN. In addition, it shares a single broadband connection with the computers on your network. Since the TZ 50 Wireless/TZ 150 Wireless/TZ 170 Wireless also provides firewall protection, intruders from the Internet cannot access the computers or files on your network. This is especially important for an “always-on” connection such as a DSL or T1 line that is shared by computers on a network.

However, wireless LANs are vulnerable to “eavesdropping” by other wireless networks which means you should establish a wireless security policy for your wireless LAN. On the TZ 50 Wireless/TZ 150 Wireless/TZ 170 Wireless, wireless clients connect to the Access Point layer of the firewall. Instead of bridging the connection directly to the wired network, wireless traffic is first passed to the Secure Wireless Gateway layer where the client is required to be authenticated via User Level Authentication. Access to Wireless Guest Services (WGS) and MAC Filter Lists are managed by the TZ 50 Wireless/ TZ 150 Wireless/TZ 170 Wireless. It is also at this layer that the TZ 50 Wireless/TZ 150 Wireless/TZ 170 Wireless has the capability of enforcing WiFiSec, an IPSec-based VPN overlay for wireless networking. As wireless network traffic successfully passes through these layers, it is then passed to the VPN-NAT-Stateful firewall layer where WiFiSec termination, address translation, and access rules are applied. If all of the security criteria is met, then wireless network traffic can then pass via one of the following Distribution Systems (DS):

•LAN

•WAN

•Wireless Client on the WLAN

•VPN tunnel

SONICWALL SONICOS STANDARD 3.0 ADMINISTRATOR’S GUIDE 127