Managing Groups And Hosts - NETGEAR ProSafe FVS124G Reference Manual

Reference Manual for the ProSafe VPN Firewall 25 with 4 Gigabit LAN and Dual WAN Ports

Managing Groups and Hosts

The Network Database is an automatically-maintained list of all known PCs and network devices.
PCs and devices become known by the following methods:
• DHCP Client Requests—By default, the DHCP server in this Router is enabled, and will
accept and respond to DHCP client requests from PCs and other network devices. These
requests also generate an entry in the Network Database. Because of this, leaving the DHCP
Server feature (on the LAN screen) enabled is strongly recommended.
• Scanning the Network—The local network is scanned using standard methods such as arp.
This will detect active devices which are not DHCP clients. However, sometimes the name of
the PC or device cannot be accurately determined, and will be shown as Unknown.
Advantages of the Network Database are as follows:
• Generally, you do not need to enter either IP address or MAC addresses. Instead, you can just
select the desired PC or device.
• No need to reserve an IP address for a PC in the DHCP Server. All IP address assignments
made by the DHCP Server will be maintained until the PC or device is removed from the
database, either by expiry (inactive for a long time) or by you.
• No need to use a Fixed IP on PCs. Because the address allocated by the DHCP Server will
never change, you don't need to assign a fixed IP to a PC to ensure it always has the same IP
address.
• MAC-level Control over PCs. The Network Database uses the MAC address to identify each
PC or device. So changing a PC's IP address does not affect any restrictions on that PC.
• Group and Individual Control over PCs
– You can assign PCs to Groups and apply restrictions to each Group using the Firewall
Rules screen (see
– You can also select the Groups to be covered by the Block Sites feature (see
on page 6-24).
– If necessary, you can also create Firewall Rules to apply to a single PC (see
Filtering" on page
cannot avoid these restrictions by changing their IP address.
6-20
"Services-Based Rules" on page
6-27). Because the MAC address is used to identify each PC, users
202-10085-01, March 2005
6-4).
Firewall Protection and Content Filtering
"Block Sites"
"Source MAC