Book Image

Getting Started with FortiGate

Book Image

Getting Started with FortiGate

Overview of this book

FortiGate from Fortinet is a highly successful family of appliances enabled to manage routing and security on different layers, supporting dynamic protocols, IPSEC and VPN with SSL, application and user control, web contents and mail scanning, endpoint checks, and more, all in a single platform. The heart of the appliance is the FortiOS (FortiOS 5 is the latest release) which is able to unify a friendly web interface with a powerful command line to deliver high performance. FortiGate is able to give users the results they usually achieve at a fraction of the cost of what they would have to invest with other vendors.This practical, hands-on guide addresses all the tasks required to configure and manage a FortiGate unit in a logical order. The book starts with topics related to VLAN and routing (static and advanced) and then discusses in full the UTM features integrated in the appliance. The text explains SSL VPN and IPSEC VPN with all the required steps you need to deploy the aforementioned solutions. High availability and troubleshooting techniques are also explained in the last two chapters of the book.This concise, example-oriented book explores all the concepts you need to administer a FortiGate unit. You will begin by covering the basic tools required to administer a FortiGate unit, including NAT, routing, and VLANs. You will then be guided through the concepts of firewalling, UTM inside the appliance, tunnelling using SSL, and IPSEC and dial-up configurations. Next, you will get acquainted with important topics like high availability and Vdoms. Finally, you will end the book with an overview of troubleshooting tools and techniques.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)

Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol


Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) is a protocol to provide device redundancy with a backup router. If the primary (master) router fails, a backup router takes over. The routers are grouped together in a single virtual router with a single IP address. The master router will always process traffic that is addressed to the virtual router address and sends out regular advertisements to the backup router. If the master experiences a failure, the backup router no longer receives advertisements and becomes the primary router. The VRRP protocol is an open standard and is implemented by many router vendors. FortiGate firewalls can be used in a VRRP cluster with other non-Fortinet devices. The configuration requires using the config vrrp command inside the configuration of the interface that connects to the master unit. The structure of this command is as follows:

  • config vrrp

    • edit <VRID_int>: Enter an ID for the virtual router.

    • set adv-interval ...