Chapter 1: Introduction; Features - Planet MH-4000 User Manual

Chapter 1: Introduction

As Internet become essential for your business, the only way to prevent your Internet connection from failure
is to have more than one connection. PLANET's Multi-Homing Security Gateways (MH-2K/4K, in the
following section) reduce the risk of potential shutdown if one of the Internet connections should fail. In
addition, they allow you to perform load-balancing by distributing the traffic through two WAN connections.
With embedded DNS server of MH-4000, connections from Internet are given the IP address of two WAN
ports to balance the traffic over the links.
Not only a multi-homing device, PLANET's MH-2K/4K also provides a complete security solution in a box.
The policy-based firewall, Intrusion detection and prevention, content filtering function and VPN connectivity
with 3DES and AES encryption make it a perfect product for your network security. No more complex
connection and settings for integrating different security products on the network is required.
Bandwidth management function is also supported on MH-2K/4K to offers network administrators an easy
yet powerful means to allocate network resources based on business priorities, and to shape and control
bandwidth usage.

1.1 Features

♦
WAN Backup: MH-2K/4K can monitor the each WAN link status and automatically activate backup links
when a failure is detected. The detection is based on the configurable target Internet addresses.
♦
Outbound Load Balancing: The network sessions are assigned based on the user configurable load
balancing mode, including "Auto", "Round-Robin", "By Traffic", "By Session" and "By Packet". User can
also configure which IP or TCP/UDP type of traffic use which WAN port to connect.
♦
Inbound Load Balancing with Embedded DNS Server: In order to direct traffic to hosted servers
through two links and provide inbound loading balancing, the MH-4000 provides a built-in DNS server for
the hosted servers.
♦
Policy-based Firewall: The built-in policy-based firewall prevents many known hacker attack, including
SYN attack, ICMP flood, UDP flood, Ping of Death, etc. The access control function allowed only
specified WAN or LAN users to use only allowed network services on specified time.
♦
VPN Connectivity: The security gateway supports PPTP and IPSec VPN. With DES, 3DES and AES
encryption and SHA-1 / MD5 authentication, the network traffic over public Internet is secured.
♦
Content Filtering: The security gateway can block network connection based on URLs, Scripts (The
Pop-up, Java Applet, cookies and Active X), P2P (eDonkey, Bit Torrent and WinMX), Instant Messaging
(MSN, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, QQ and Skype) and Download blocking.
♦
Dynamic Domain Name System (DDNS): The Dynamic DNS service allows you to alias a dynamic IP
address to a static hostname.
♦
Multiple NAT: Multiple NAT allows local port to set multiple subnetworks and connect with the Internet
through different WAN IP Addresses.
Multi-Homing Security Gateway User's Manual
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