Application Firewall

Applies To: Wi-Fi Cloud-managed Access Points (AP125, AP225W, AP325, AP327X, AP420)

You can enable an Application Firewall and create rules to control application use. You can enable the Application Firewall independently of the Firewall rules to create rules to allow or block specific applications on the SSID.

You must enable Application Visibility on an SSID to be able to use the Application Firewall.

Application Visibility and the Application Firewall are only supported on 802.11ac Wave 2 APs. The feature is not supported on the AP120, AP320, and AP322.

Add Application Firewall Rule

To add a new application firewall rule:

  1. Click Add New Rule.
  2. Specify a Rule Name.
  3. Select the rule category from the drop-down list. You can choose from one of these categories:
  • Messaging
  • Proxy
  • File Transfer
  • Networking
  • Web Services
  • Remote Access
  • VPN and Tunneling
  • Database
  • Network Monitoring
  • Collaboration
  • Games
  • Streaming Media
  • Mail
  • Social Networking
  1. Select the Application Name.
  2. Select the Action to take if the application is detected. You can choose to Allow, Block, or Allow and Mark.

Click Add New Rule to add new application rules above or below the current rule.

The default application firewall rule is to block all applications.

About Firewall Rules Order

Rules are processed in the configured order. When a rule match occurs, the configured action is performed and all other rules are ignored. You can select and move entries to reorder the rules.

This table describes the precedence used in the event of a conflict between a firewall rule (layer 3) and application rule (layer 7).

Firewall Rule
(Layer 3)		 Application Firewall Rule
(Layer 7)		 Final Action
Deny Any Deny
Allow Deny Deny
Allow Allow Allow
Allow No Match Allow
No Match Deny Deny
No Match Allow Allow
No Match No Match Default

This table describes the precedence used in the event of a conflict between marking rules:

Firewall Rule
(Layer 3)		 Application Firewall Rule
(Layer 7)		 Final Action
Allow and Mark Allow and Mark Allow with Application L7 marking
Allow and Mark Allow Allow with Firewall L3 marking
Allow and Mark No Match Allow with Firewall L3 marking
No Match Allow and Mark Allow with Application L7 marking
No Match No Match Default marking