Earning your CCNA Security certification is a tremendous boost to your career and your career prospects! To help you prepare for total success on exam day, here are 10 complimentary questions on the IOS Firewall set. Answers are at the end of the article. Enjoy!

1. Define the term "DMZ" as it pertains to network security, and name three different common network devices that are typically found there.

2. Identify the true statements.

A. Stateless packet filtering considers the TCP connection state.

B. Stateful packet filtering considers the TCP connection state.

C. Neither stateless nor stateful packet filtering monitor the TCP connection state.

D. Both stateless and stateful packet filtering monitor the TCP connection state, and keep a state table containing that information.

3. Does the Cisco IOS Firewall feature set act as a stateful or stateless packet filter?

4. Which of the following are considered parts of the IOS Firewall feature set?

A. IOS Firewall
B. Intrusion Prevention System
C. RADIUS
D. Authentication Proxy
E. Password Encryption

5. Identify the true statements regarding the Authentication Proxy.

A. It's part of the IOS Firewall Feature Set.
B. It allows creation of per-user security profiles, rather than more general profiles.
C. It allows creation of general security profiles, but not per-user profiles.
D. Profiles can be stored locally, but not remotely.
E. Profiles can be stored on a RADIUS server.
F. Profiles can be stored on a TACACS+ server.

6. Configuring ACLs is an important part of working with the IOS Firewall. What wildcard masks are replaced in ACLs by the words host and any?

7. What does the dollar sign in the following ACL line indicate?

R1(config)#$ 150 deny ip 172.50.50.0 0.0.0.255 172.50.100.0 0.0.0.255

8. Basically, how does an IOS Firewall prevent a TCP SYN attack?

9. What does the term "punch a hole in the firewall" refer to? (Logically, that is, not physically.)

10. What exactly does the router-traffic option in the following configuration do?

R4(config)#ip inspect name PASSCCNASECURITY tcp router-traffic
R4(config)#ip inspect name PASSCCNASECURITY udp router-traffic
R4(config)#ip inspect name PASSCCNASECURITY icmp router-traffic

Here are the answers!

1. It's easy to think of your network as the "inside", and everything else as "outside". However, we've got a third area when it comes to firewalls - the DMZ.

From an IT standpoint, the DMZ is the part of our network that is exposed to outside networks. It's common to find the following devices in a DMZ:

FTP server
Email server
E-commerce server
DNS servers
Web servers

2. (B.) Stateful packet filtering does monitor the connection state, and that's particularly important when it comes to preventing TCP attacks. A stateful firewall will not only monitor the state of the TCP connection, but also the sequence numbers. Stateful firewalls accomplish this by keeping a session table, or state table.

3. The Cisco IOS Firewall is a stateful filter.

4. (A, B, D.) There are three major components to the IOS Firewall feature set - the IOS Firewall, the Intrusion Prevention System (IPS), and the Authentication Proxy.

5. (A, B, E, F. T he Authentication Proxy allows us to create security profiles that will be applied on a per-user basis, rather than a per-subnet or per-address basis. These profiles can be kept on either of the following:

RADIUS server

TACACS+ server

Upon successful authentication, that particular user's security policy is downloaded from the RADIUS or TACACS+ server and applied by the IOS Firewall router.

6. We have the option of using the word host to represent a wildcard mask of 0.0.0.0. Consider a configuration where only packets from IP source 10.1.1.1 should be allowed and all other packets denied. The following ACLs both do that.

R3#conf t

R3(config)#access-list 6 permit 10.1.1.1 0.0.0.0

R3(config)#conf t

R3(config)#access-list 7 permit host 10.1.1.1

The keyword any can be used to represent a wildcard mask of 255.255.255.255. Both of the following lines permit all traffic.

R3(config)#access-list 15 permit any

R3(config)#access-list 15 permit 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.255

There's no "right" or "wrong" decision to make when you're configuring ACLs in the real world. For your exam, though, I'd be very familiar with the proper use of host and any.

7. The dollar sign simply indicates that part of the command you're entering or viewing can't be shown because the entry is so long. It does not mean the command is illegal.

8. The IOS Firewall can use any or all of the following values to detect when a TCP SYN attack is underway:

Overall total of incomplete TCP sessions

Number of incomplete TCP sessions in a certain amount of time

Number of incomplete TCP sessions on a per-host basis

When any of these thresholds are reached, either of the following actions can be taken:

Block all incoming SYN packets for a certain period of time

Transmit a RST to both parties in the oldest incomplete session

We'll look at specific instances in future tutorials.

9. That term simply refers to configuring the firewall to open a port that was previously closed. Don't forget to close it when you no longer need it to be open!

10. If you're going to inspect traffic that is actually generated on the router, you need to include the router-traffic option at the end of that particular ip inspect statement.

Look for more Cisco certification practice exams and fully-illustrated tutorials on my website!

Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933, is the owner of The Bryant Advantage, home of free CCNA Security exam tutorials.