315
SonicOS Enhanced 4.0 Administrator Guide
CHAPTER 27
Chapter 27: Viewing WLAN Settings, Statistics, and
Station Status

Wireless Overview

The SonicWALL Wireless security appliances support two wireless protocols called IEEE
802.11b and 802.11g, commonly known as Wi-Fi, and send data via radio transmissions. The
SonicWALL wireless security appliance 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 wireless
security appliance offers the flexibility of wireless without compromising network security.
Typically, the wireless security appliance 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 wireless security appliance 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 wireless
security appliance, 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. Wireless access to Guest Services and MAC Filter Lists are managed by the
wireless security appliance. It is also at this layer that the wireless security appliance 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
• DMZ or other zone on Opt port