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Vigor Firewall Routers

Firewall

In construction, a firewall is a non-flammable wall that prevents fires from spreading throughout a building. Homes, for example, may have a firewall between the garage and the rest of the house to prevent garage fires from threatening other rooms.

With the rapid popularisation of the internet, the term firewall is more commonly used in computer networking.

Like the firewalls used in homes and buildings, computer firewalls act as a barrier between computers on a network. For companies with a computer network or for individuals with a permanent connection to the internet (such as through ADSL or cable), a firewall is critical. Without a firewall, intruders on the network are able to destroy, tamper with or gain access to the files on your computer or network.

A Firewalls function is to use a set of filters that are constantly monitoring traffic on the network. Whenever a packet of information triggers one of the filters, the firewall prevents it from passing through in the attempt to prevent damage.

After evaluation of a number of firewalls MCTS have identified the Draytek Vigor range to be ideal for a combination of cost and features. They are more than adequate for the small to medium business community.

ADSL Modem

The router is directly connected to the Broadband telephone socket and replaces the modem supplied by BT or NTL. This enables MCTS to view various metrics that include; connection strength, line usage, connection speed and other QoS indicators.

Virtual Private Network

The router can act as a VPN concentrator for up to 16 simultaneous remote sites. The Vigor uses industry standard protocols including IPSec, PPTP, 3DES, AES and MPPE. Cross compatibility with common Microsoft Windows and MacOS VPN software clients is supported as well as having compatibility with many other 3rd party VPN vendor's products, including Cisco™ Pix, Nokia™, Sonicwall™, Checkpoint™, ZyWall™ and Watchguard™. Thius ensures that even if the remote end has a different type of Firewall the Vigor will be able to connect.

Bandwidth Management

The router has the ability to select specific protocols/services to have guaranteed levels of your Internet bandwidth. For example, if you need a VPN to have priority, we could specify that when you are using the VPN 60% of your bandwidth is reserved, once you cease using the VPN this bandwidth is then dynamically reassign to regular traffic.

Firewall

The router includes full packet-level firewall facilities, that include Network Address Translation (NAT) which hides your internal network from the external interface. The router also employs keep-state packet recording; which means that when a packet is sent out, a reciprocal record is kept to allow a packet coming back in the opposite direction, but a default 'deny' policy means that any packet arriving which appears unsolicited won't get through.

Content Filtering

The Vigor has basic content/site filtering which allows you to specify certain sites or keywords, for example www.hotmail.com. The router can also be configured to block certain types of attachments such as .exe or .zip files which are often used to deploy Malware.

VLAN

This facility enables you to segment each of the router's four Ethernet ports, so that each is a separate virtual LAN. You can create VLAN groups which include or exclude any of the ports so that groups, departments and companies can communicate with each other, or not. For example, two companies could share the same broadband feed, without having access to each other's networks.