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The Border Patrol: Firewalls For VOIP
by Gary Audin
Posted 02/2004; Published 10/2003
Abstract:
Firewalls provide security by blocking intrusions into an enterprise network. By allowing certain traffic in while blocking other kinds, they represent the physical implementation of an enterprise’s security policies.
But firewalls also produce performance problems and cause delay. Most firewalls are designed for data applications and are not application specific, though some firewall vendors (such as Check Point, Jasomi, Datapower, F5 and Sarvega) are moving toward packet content analysis (called deep packet inspection). This is a move to more application-specific security, though even it does not yet cover voice over IP (VOIP) packet analysis.
VOIP traffic requires real-time delivery, short delay, low jitter and low packet loss across networks. Data firewalls are not designed for real-time applications. Among other issues, they have difficulty dealing with Network Address Translation (NAT) and VOIP signaling.
Besides these challenges, other performance and control issues arise when voice passes through a firewall. Next-generation firewalls will have to understand the concept of a “call” in order to do voice traffic analysis.
These complexities point toward the central question: What is the best way for enterprises to deploy firewall capabilities in converged voice/data networks?
About the author:
Gary Audin is president of Delphi, Inc., an independent consulting and training firm.
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