Wireless: Built-in Wireless Overview

The SonicWall Wireless security appliances support wireless protocols called IEEE 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n and 802.11ac commonly known as Wi-Fi and send data via Radio transmissions.

The SonicWall wireless security appliance combines three networking components to offer a fully secure wireless firewall:

• An Access Point
• A Secure wireless gateway
• A Statefull firewall with flexible NAT & VPN termination and initiation capabilities

With this combination, the wireless security appliance offers the flexibility of wireless without compromising network security.

Typically, the wireless security appliance is the access point for your wireless LAN and serves as the central access point for computers on your LAN.

In addition, it shares a single broadband connection with the computers on your network. Since the wireless security appliance also provides firewall protection, intruders from the Internet cannot access the computers or files on your network.

This is especially important for an “always-on” connection such as a DSL or T1 line that is shared by computers on a network.

However, wireless LANs are vulnerable to “eavesdropping” by other wireless networks which means you should establish a wireless security policy for your wireless LAN.

On the wireless security appliance, wireless clients connect to the Access Point layer of the firewall.

Instead of bridging the connection directly to the wired network, wireless traffic is first passed to the Secure Wireless Gateway layer where the client is required to be authenticated via User Level  Authentication.

Wireless access to Guest Services and MAC Filter Lists are managed by the wireless security appliance. If all of the security criteria are met, then wireless network traffic can then pass via one of the following Distribution Systems (DS):

• LAN
• WAN
• Wireless Client on the WLAN
• DMZ or other zone on Opt port
• VPN tunnel