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Stateful Firewalls

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by beginner9

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Hi

As far as my knowledge I know three types of firewalls
1) packet filtering
2) application gateway
3) Stateful

I just noticed that Netgear has a SPI (stateful packet inspection) firewall ?

I was confused? Is there any difference betweeen
Stateful Multilayer Inspection Firewall
and
Stateful Packet Inspection Firewall.

statful packet ???????????????????

Thanks in advance

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by robo_dev

Marketing+Architecture

I've seen the two terms used interchangeably.

'Multilayer' implies that the device is inspecting each packet at all seven OSI layers, versus a packet filtering firewall which operates only at the network layer.

BUT, in order for the Stateful Packet Inspection firewall to operate, it needs to inspect packets at all seven OSI layers.

So, It's the same thing.

So, in effect, it's like saying 'Fully Automatic Transmission' versus 'Automatic Transmission'.

At a high-level, Stateful inspection just means checking to see if packets are behaving the way they are supposed to behave.

Do not confuse 'Stateful Multilayer' with 'Deep Packet Inspection', which is an 'Appliction Firewall' that looks at the CONTENTS of packets at the application layer, to catch viruses/exploits, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_packet_inspection

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