Building Internet Firewalls, 2nd Edition

Chapter 5. Firewall Technologies

In Part I, we introduced Internet firewalls and summarized what they can and cannot do to improve network security. In this chapter, we present major firewalls concepts. What are the terms you will hear in discussions of Internet firewalls? What are the components that can be put together to build these common firewall architectures? How do you evaluate a firewall design? In the remaining chapters of this book, we’ll describe these components and architectures in detail.

Some Firewall Definitions

You may be familiar with some of the following firewall terms, and some may be new to you. Some may seem familiar, but they may be used in a way that is slightly different from what you’re accustomed to (though we try to use terms that are as standard as possible). Unfortunately, there is no completely consistent terminology for firewall architectures and components. Different people use terms in different — or, worse still, conflicting — ways. Also, these same terms sometimes have other meanings in other networking fields; the following definitions are for a firewalls context.

Here are some very basic definitions; we describe these terms in greater detail elsewhere:

Firewall

A component or set of components that restricts access between a protected network and the Internet, or between other sets of networks.

Host

A computer system attached to a network.

Bastion host

A computer system that must be highly secured because it is vulnerable to attack, usually because ...