Task 2: North-South Network Traffic

In this task, the student will create FortiGate firewall policies to allow North-South (Spoke to Internet) network traffic.

  1. Ping from the Linux Spoke VMs to the Internet

    • Open a serial console connections to each Linux Spoke VM and ping the other Spoke VM

      • Linux-Spoke1-VM - ping 8.8.8.8
      • Linux-Spoke2-VM - ping 8.8.8.8

      Neither ping will be successful because the FortiGate is not allowing traffic from port2 to port1.

      Linux-Spoke1_VMLinux-Spoke2_VM
      northsouthping1 northsouthping1northsouthping2 northsouthping2

    However, the traffic from each VM does reach the FortiGate, but it is dropped. Firewall Policies are required to allow traffic to pass from port2 to port1, and then return back to the VM that originated the ping.

  2. View ping traffic from Spoke VMs reaching the FortiGates

    • Open each FortiGate in a browser tab/window
    • Open FortiGate CLI
    • Run CLI command diagnose sniffer packet port2 'icmp' 4 0 a

      • 4 - means: print header of packets with interface name

      • 0 - means: continuous output

      • a - means: absolute UTC time, yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss.ms

        In the screenshots notice how this time the ping traffic appeared on FortiGate 1

        FortiGate 0FortiGate 1
        fgtpingdiag5 fgtpingdiag5fgtpingdiag6 fgtpingdiag6

    The ping traffic is only on one FortiGate, this is because the internal load balancer sends traffic from the Spokes to one of the FortiGates for inspection.

  3. Create Firewall policies on both FortiGates to allow traffic to pass from port2 to port1 (Spoke to Internet)

    The FortiGates can be setup to sync configuration information. If one of the FortiGates was designated as the primary configuration supplier and the other as a secondary, any changes made to the primary would be replicated to the secondary.

    Configuration Synchronization was not enabled on the FortiGates as part of this course.

    • Navigate to “Policy & Objects”

    • Click Firewall Policy

    • Click Create new

      AttributeValue
      Nameport2_to_port1
      Incoming interfaceport2
      Outgoing interfaceport1
      Sourceall
      Destinationall
      Schedulealways
      ServiceALL
      NATenabled
      IP pool configurationUse Outgoing Interface Address
      Enable this policyenabled

    • Click “OK”

      firewall2 firewall2

  4. Ping from the Linux Spoke VMs to the Internet and confirm the pings are successful

    • Linux-Spoke1-VM - ping 8.8.8.8
    • Linux-Spoke2-VM - ping 8.8.8.8
      Linux-Spoke1_VMLinux-Spoke2_VM
      northsouthping3 northsouthping3northsouthping4 northsouthping4
      FortiGate 0FortiGate 1
      fgtpingdiag7 fgtpingdiag7fgtpingdiag8 fgtpingdiag8

Continue to Chapter 6 - Two vWAN Hubs