What is the default setting of the Inbound Firewall on Surf SOHO MK3, fw 7.1.1?

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1

I found 3 contradicting statements, but only 1 can be true:

  1. Block all unsolicited inbound traffic ( stateful firewall) - mentioned in forums, intuitively makes sense, but how can I confirm by reviewing myself the Surf SOHO settings?

  2. Allow all inbound traffic - This is what I see in the admin GUI

  3. Block all inbound traffic - per Pepwave Surf SOHO User Manual Firmware 7, Jan. 2017, Chapter 11, page 59: “Pepwave routers can act as a firewall that blocks, by default, all inbound access from the Internet”. This must be an error? Some inbound traffic must be allowed?

2

Actually all three are true.

  1. It is a stateful firewall, so blocks all unsolicited traffic (when the WANs are in their default NAT mode).
  2. When your WAN is in NAT mode, If you create a port forwarding rule or enable a service (set up IPSEC for example) then traffic for those rules / services are automatically allowed. If your WAN is in IP forwarding mode all traffic is allowed through.
  3. When you WAN is in NAT mode, all inbound traffic is blocked unless it is to a system or user configured port that has been specifically opened. Or unless it is traffic sent inbound to a previous outbound request (ie the Stateful bit of the firewall)
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3

Thank you, Martin.
IMO your statements 1-3 deserve a place in the next version of the User Manual.

Re 1. - Is there any way to review the settings of the stateful firewall through the user interface (GUI)?
By analogy another router - Edgerouter X (by Ubiquiti) allows to control/view the inbound stateful firewall configuration through user interface (GUI).

4

No not really. You can see active sessions (in Status → Active Sessions) and you can edit the firewall rules to log activity but there is no gui to monitor the firewall itself.

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