Firewall – lready a recommended IPv6 Firewall setup

best practicesfirewallipv6

I'd like to switch from private-IPv4-subnet-behind-NAT to IPv6, but of course I have no intention of exposing my users' workstations "unprotected" to the net.

Some obvious points up-front:

  • Allow access to provided services
  • Deny access to workstations

Is there a recommended firewall setup guideline that talks about the details and experiences with such setups?

Best Answer

The advice is largely unchanged from public-IPv4-subnet-behind-Firewall setups that we've had in the .EDU space since the beginning of the commercial Internet. Since early .EDU subnet allocations were rather generous (my old work has an IPv4 /16 allocation, and I know of another institution our size that has a /16 and another /18 for good measure) these institutions have deep experience protecting publicly routeable IP addresses behind firewalls. Heck, that setup was what the original IP creators had in mind.

The principles (from memory):

  • Do not allow external access to internal IP addresses unless there is a specific business need (default deny).
  • Allow ICMP to internal addresses as the IP protocols rely on it to determine network conditions.
    • Ping-sweeps should be blocked by your IPS config.
    • Keep in mind that just because a machine in ping-able, does not mean it is connectable!
  • Reverse DNS lookups do matter for some use-cases, so be sure that they're working right.

A short list, I know. But the basic firewall principle going back 20 years is the same: allow access only to those IP:port combinations you want to permit, deny everything else.

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