Protecting Your Network
5-1
May 2004, 202-10030-02
Chapter 5
Protecting Your Network
This chapter describes how to use the firewall features of the FVL328 Prosafe High Speed VPN
Firewall to protect your network.
Firewall Protection and Content Filtering Overview
The FVL328 Prosafe High Speed VPN Firewall 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.
To configure these features of your router, click on the subheadings under the Content Filtering
heading in the Main Menu of the browser interface. The subheadings are described below:
Using the Block Sites Menu to Screen Content
The FVL328 allows you to restrict access based on the following categories:
•
Use of a proxy server
•
Type of file (Java, ActiveX, Cookie)
•
Web addresses
•
Web address keywords