strange firewall behaviour

Mar 20, 2005 2 Replies

At my working-place there are two networks. One network is connected to the internet through a linux-firewall and the other net is connected to the internet over a fortigate-firewall (fortigate 50 or fortigate 60). I administrate the linux-firewall and I have no rights on the fortigate-firewall, I even don't know which model it is exactly - the only think I know is the mac-address and the price - therefore I think its a fortigate 50 or 60.



But I see some strange thinks in the log-file of my linux-firewall coming from the fortigate-box. Both machines - my linux-firewall and the fortigate-box are in the same public net. For example my linux-box has the IP-Address 190.30.30.5 in the net 190.30.30.0/24 and the fortigate-box has 190.30.30.6. So I can see osi2 and osi3 broadcasts. (The Ip-Addresses are examples and not the real ones).



I see a large amounts of arp-requests coming from this fortigate machine:



arp who-has 217.12.10.99 tell 190.30.30.6 arp who-has 193.80.200.160 tell 190.30.30.6 arp who-has 193.80.200.135 tell 190.30.30.6 arp who-has 12.158.80.10 tell 190.30.30.6 arp who-has 195.128.164.3 tell 190.30.30.6 arp who-has 193.201.52.83 tell 190.30.30.6 arp who-has 195.3.96.71 tell 190.30.30.6 arp who-has 64.12.164.248 tell 190.30.30.6 arp who-has 212.227.40.104 tell 190.30.30.6 arp who-has 62.178.215.241 tell 190.30.30.6 ....



strange, isn't it? the fortigate-box asks for osi2-addresses of machines, the people behind the firewall try to contact!



What I now whould like to understand:



- I this a feature of the fortigate-box (perhaps because the box is under heavy load - fortigate 50 & 60 are small business firewalls and this box has to serve about 40-60 clients)



- Or is this because of misconfiguration? (perhaps: fortigate has an ethernet-port for inside, outside and dmz - perhaps they (the admins!) have plugged in the cable to the wrong port - dmz? and not in the outside port?)



- Has anybody seen the same and knows the reason!



What I else see in my firewall-log are pakets with source 0.0.0.0 and 255.255.255.255, udp, SPT 68, DPT 67, TTL 128



- okay dhcp-request coming from a windows maschine. But I also see the mac-address of the asking machine. (I asked the fortigate admins, if the have a machine with this mac-address in their inner-net and they said "yes") I now wonder why the fortigate is routing this packet? A packet with source 0.0.0.0 and dest 255.255.255.255 - with the original mac??



What is going on there??



thanks very much for any reply



andi


This is strange. Usually you see more firewall-to-default router and local subnet ARPs. These are strange...Do they have many subnets behind them?

The only way I could think of to explain this is if they are doing a bridging firewall setup. I have a cable modem and do the same thing with a FreeBSD fireall. I do this because my static IP is on a different subnet than my dynamic IP addresses (Static = My server and Dynamic are my desktops)...So in this setup you will see the DHCP packets with the original MAC addresses...

Am Sat, 19 Mar 2005 23:37:30 -0800 schrieb Michael J. Pelletier:

Not many - inside of the fortigate-firewall there are two or three subnets all using private Ips somewhere in the range of 192.168/16 (and there are about 30-60 clients)

Did I understand this correctly? - your cable-modem is the dhcp-server and you have to get the dhcp-communication over your firewall which comes after the cable-modem?

When the fortigate-admins speak from "their" firewall they always say "it is a hardware-firewall?" I don't know what they are understand under a "hardware-firewall". but perhaps it is also a bridging-firewall and they don't know how to configure it correctly?

thx

andi

Join the Discussion

Have something to add? Share your thoughts — no account required.

Didn't find your answer?

Ask the community — no account required