Stateful vs Stateless Firewalls
Understanding Stateless Firewalls
Stateless firewalls, also called packet-filtering firewalls, examine each packet in isolation without maintaining context about the connection. They make filtering decisions based solely on packet headers including source/destination IP addresses, ports, and protocol types.
Stateful Firewall Technology
Stateful firewalls track the state of network connections and maintain context about active sessions. They create connection state tables that track TCP handshakes, sequence numbers, and session information, enabling intelligent filtering decisions based on connection history.
Performance Comparison
Stateless firewalls offer higher performance and lower resource consumption since they don't maintain state tables. However, stateful firewalls provide superior security by understanding connection context and detecting anomalies that stateless firewalls cannot identify.
Use Cases
Stateless firewalls are suitable for high-speed networks where simple filtering suffices, such as perimeter routers. Stateful firewalls are essential for corporate networks requiring sophisticated threat detection, application awareness, and connection tracking capabilities.
Security Implications
Stateless firewalls are vulnerable to IP spoofing, session hijacking, and fragmentation attacks. Stateful firewalls mitigate these risks by validating connection states, but require more processing power and memory to maintain state tables.
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