• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

[O/C]Network Security 102: Stateful Firewalls

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

Overclockers.com

Member
Joined
Nov 1, 1998
Session-based firewalls are probably the most popular type of firewall today. But how do they work in protecting your network? In this article we will discuss Stateful Firewalls, and the strengths and weaknesses of this type of firewall.

Stateful Firewalls



Stateful Firewalls, also known as session-based firewalls work by grouping packet flows into sessions, and filtering traffic on a per-session basis. The firewall also keeps track of the sessions by creating a table in which to match future packet flows in the sessions. For more about the difference between flows and sessions take ... Return to Article
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Cool, good explanation. I'll always stick with Stateful Firewalls for home use.
 
Looks good, however I would argue that state firewalls are not grossly more expensive then stateless firewalls.

Also a article on transparent vs NATing/routing firewalls would help as well.
 
Looks good, however I would argue that state firewalls are not grossly more expensive then stateless firewalls.

Also a article on transparent vs NATing/routing firewalls would help as well.
I would agree with you on the lower-end firewalls, but I am talking about firewalls that has firewall throughput of over 1Gbps - those are easily $10k or more for session-based filtering, when I can purchase a server for less than half that cost and still achieve the same throughput on flow-based filtering.

Are you talking about the differences between a layer-2 (transparent) and layer-3 (routing) modes? Or simply just NAT? I do have an article on NAT in the works, but I can definitely add layer-2 (transparent mode) firewalls to the list.


Thanks everyone for the comments and suggestions! If you have additional articles you would like to see, please feel free to PM me or IM me.
 
Back