SonicWALL Internet security appliances are built on stateful inspection firewall technology, the most effective way to protect network access. Stateful inspection technology tracks each packet traversing the firewall and makes sure that they are legitimate. A stateful inspection firewall also monitors the state of the connection and compiles the information in a state table ensuring that the source and destination of each packet is valid. Designed into every SonicWALL Internet security appliance are:
  • Stateful Packet Inspection ® Stateful Packet Inspection is a smarter form of packet filtering, which inspects headers of network "packets." It blocks any packet arriving at the firewall claiming to be a solicited response.
  • Network Address Translation (NAT) ® NAT is a technique that hides the IP addresses of your internal computers from prying eyes by replacing them with a single public IP address.
  • Application Proxy ® This service allows firewalls to inspect more than just packet headers before deciding whether or not to allow a packet to pass through.
  • Monitoring and Logging ® Keeping records of attacks is important. It will help you analyze your security needs and provide you with feedback on the performance of your firewall.

Hardware vs. Software Based Firewall
There are two main types of security and remote access options available today: software and hardware. Software based firewalls running a computer or server have inherent problems.
  • A general-purpose computer is not the most reliable device for the processing demands of security and placing processing demands on a computer or processor can slow down the network.
  • A general-purpose computer's operating system isn't designed with bulletproof security in mind. Configuring computer-based firewall gateways require that you harden the operating system. This means ensuring the operating system always has the latest security patches to fix new security flaws.
  • The complexity of current software configurations has been problematic, particularly ease of use and management. The hardware based firewall solutions, typically embodied in security appliances, protects the entire network and offloads the firewall processing from the computer. Because security appliances protect the network at the Internet gateway, they provide a platform for seamless local or remote management of all security and remote access services. A security appliance is a solid-state platform with a powerful onboard processor to handle the demands of firewall processing.