• SonicOS 7.0 Rules and Policies
• Access Rules
  • Setting Firewall Access Rules
    • About Connection Limiting
    • Using Bandwidth Management with Access Rules
      • Enabling Bandwidth Management on an Access Rule
    • Creating Access Rules
    • Configuring Access Rules for IPv6
      • About Stateful Packet Inspection Default Access Rules
    • Enabling and Disabling Access Rules
    • Editing Access Rules
    • Deleting Access Rules
    • Restoring Access Rules to Default Settings
    • Displaying Access Rules
      • By Zones
      • By Column
    • Displaying Access Rule Traffic Statistics
    • Configuring Access Rules for NAT64
    • Configuring Access Rules for a Zone
    • Access Rules for DNS Proxy
    • User Priority for Access Rules
  • Access Rule Configuration Examples
    • Enabling Ping
    • Blocking LAN Access for Specific Services
    • Allowing WAN Primary IP Access from the LAN Zone
• NAT Rules
  • About NAT in SonicOS
  • About NAT Load Balancing
    • Determining the NAT LB Method to Use
    • Caveats
    • How Load Balancing Algorithms are Applied
    • Sticky IP Algorithm Examples
      • Example One - Mapping to a Network
      • Example Two - Mapping to an IP Address Range
  • About NAT64
    • Use of Pref64::/n
  • About FQDN-based NAT
  • About Source MAC Address Override
  • Viewing NAT Policy Entries
    • Changing the Display
    • Filtering the Display
    • Displaying Information about Policies
  • Adding or Editing NAT or NAT64 Rule Policies
  • Deleting NAT Policies
  • Creating NAT Rule Policies: Examples
    • Creating a One-to-One NAT Policy for Inbound Traffic
    • Creating a One-to-One NAT Policy for Outbound Traffic
    • Inbound Port Address Translation via One-to-One NAT Policy
    • Inbound Port Address Translation via WAN IP Address
    • Creating a Many-to-One NAT Policy
    • Creating a Many-to-Many NAT Policy
    • Creating a One-to-Many NAT Load Balancing Policy
    • Creating a NAT Load Balancing Policy for Two Web Servers
    • Creating a WAN-to-WAN Access Rule for a NAT64 Policy
    • DNS Doctoring
• Routing
  • About Routing
    • About Metrics and Administrative Distance
      • About Metrics
      • About Administrative Distance
    • Route Advertisement
    • ECMP Routing
    • Policy-based Routing
    • Policy-based TOS Routing
    • PBR Metric-based Priority
    • Policy-based Routing and IPv6
    • OSPF and RIP Advanced Routing Services
      • About Routing Services
        • Protocol Type
        • Maximum Hops
        • Split-Horizon
        • Poison Reverse
        • Routing Table Updates
        • Subnet Sizes Supported
        • Autonomous System Topologies
      • OSPF Terms
    • Drop Tunnel Interface
    • App-based Routing
  • Rules and Policies >
    • Configuring
      • Adding Static Routes
      • Probe-Enabled Policy-based Routing Configuration
• Content Filter Rules
  • About Content Filtering Rules (CFS)
    • About Content Filter Rules
    • About UUIDs for CFS Policies
    • About Content Filter Action Objects
    • How CFS Works
  • Configuring CFS Policies
    • About the Content Filter Rule Table
      • Searching the Content Filter Rule Table
    • Adding a Content Filter Rule
    • Editing a Content Filter Rule
    • Deleting Content Filter Rules
• App Rules
  • About App Rules
    • What are App Rules?
      • About App Rules Policies
      • About App Rules Capabilities
    • Benefits of App Rules
    • How Does Application Control Work?
    • About App Rules Policy Creation
    • Licensing App Rules and App Control
    • Terminology
  • Rules and Policies > App Rules
    • Configuring an App Rules Policy
  • Verifying App Rules Configuration
    • Useful Tools
      • Wireshark
      • Hex Editor
  • App Rules Use Cases
    • Creating a Regular Expression in a Match Object
    • Policy-based Application Rules
    • Logging Application Signature-based Policies
    • Compliance Enforcement
    • Server Protection
    • Hosted Email Environments
    • Email Control
    • Web Browser Control
    • HTTP Post Control
    • Forbidden File Type Control
    • ActiveX Control
    • FTP Control
      • Blocking Outbound Proprietary Files Over FTP
      • Blocking Outbound UTF-8 / UTF-16 Encoded Files
      • Blocking FTP Commands
    • Bandwidth Management
    • Bypass DPI
    • Custom Signature
    • Reverse Shell Exploit Prevention
      • Generating the Network Activity
      • Capturing and Exporting the Payload to a Text File Using Wireshark
      • Creating a Match Object
      • Defining the Policy
• Endpoint Rules
• SonicWall Support
  • About This Document

About Connection Limiting

The Connection Limiting feature is intended to offer an additional layer of security and control when coupled with such features as SYN Cookies and Intrusion Prevention Services (IPS). Connection limiting provides a means of throttling connections through the firewall using Access Rules as a classifier, and declaring the maximum percentage of the total available connection cache that can be allocated to that class of traffic.

Coupled with IPS, this can be used to mitigate the spread of a certain class of malware as exemplified by Sasser, Blaster, and Nimda. These worms propagate by initiating connections to random addresses at atypically high rates. For example, each host infected with Nimda attempted 300 to 400 connections per second, Blaster sent 850 packets per second, and Sasser was capable of 5,120 attempts per second. Typical, non-malicious network traffic generally does not establish anywhere near these numbers, particularly when it is Trusted > Untrusted traffic (that is, LAN > WAN). Malicious activity of this sort can consume all available connection‐cache resources in a matter of seconds, particularly on smaller appliances.

In addition to mitigating the propagation of worms and viruses, Connection Limiting can be used to alleviate other types of connection‐cache resource consumption issues, such as those posed by uncompromised internal hosts running peer‐to‐peer software (assuming IPS is configured to allow these services), or internal or external hosts using packet generators or scanning tools.

Finally, Connection Limiting can be used to protect publicly available servers (such as, Web servers) by limiting the number of legitimate inbound connections permitted to the server (that is, to protect the server against the Slashdot‐effect). This is different from SYN flood protection that attempts to detect and prevent partially‐open or spoofed TCP connection. This is most applicable for Untrusted traffic, but it can be applied to any zone traffic as needed.

Connection Limiting is applied by defining a percentage of the total maximum allowable connections that might be allocated to a particular type of traffic. The previous figures show the default LAN > WAN setting, where all available resources might be allocated to LAN > WAN (any source, any destination, any service) traffic.

More specific rules can be constructed; for example, to limit the percentage of connections that can be consumed by a certain type of traffic (for example, FTP traffic to any destination on the WAN), or to prioritize important traffic (for example, HTTPS traffic to a critical server) by allowing 100% to that class of traffic, and limiting general traffic to a smaller percentage (minimum allowable value is 1%).

It is not possible to use IPS signatures as a Connection Limiting classifier; only Access Rules (for example, Addresses and Services) are permissible.