Chapter 9 Firewalls; Firewall Overview; Types Of Firewalls; Packet Filtering Firewalls - ZyXEL Communications ZyWALL 5 User Manual

This chapter gives some background information on firewalls and introduces the ZyWALL
firewall.

9.1 Firewall Overview

Originally, the term firewall referred to a construction technique designed to prevent the
spread of fire from one room to another. The networking term firewall is a system or group of
systems that enforces an access-control policy between two networks. It may also be defined
as a mechanism used to protect a trusted network from an untrusted network. Of course,
firewalls cannot solve every security problem. A firewall is one of the mechanisms used to
establish a network security perimeter in support of a network security policy. It should never
be the only mechanism or method employed. For a firewall to guard effectively, you must
design and deploy it appropriately. This requires integrating the firewall into a broad
information-security policy. In addition, specific policies must be implemented within the
firewall itself.

9.2 Types of Firewalls

There are three main types of firewalls:

1 Packet Filtering Firewalls

2 Application-level Firewalls

3 Stateful Inspection Firewalls
9.2.1 Packet Filtering Firewalls
Packet filtering firewalls restrict access based on the source/destination computer network
address of a packet and the type of application.
9.2.2 Application-level Firewalls
Application-level firewalls restrict access by serving as proxies for external servers. Since they
use programs written for specific Internet services, such as HTTP, FTP and telnet, they can
evaluate network packets for valid application-specific data. Application-level gateways have
a number of general advantages over the default mode of permitting application traffic directly
to internal hosts:

Chapter 9 Firewalls

ZyWALL 5 User's Guide
C
H A P T E R
Firewalls
9
151