Task 2: North-South Network Traffic

In this task 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 8.8.8.8

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

    • Also try wget https://www.fortinet.com

      Neither ping nor wget will be successful because the FortiGate is not allowing traffic from port2 to port1.

      Linux-Spoke1-VMLinux-Spoke2-VM
      Zoom me
      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
        5_2-north-south-net-traffic-2
        5_2-north-south-net-traffic-1

    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. View wget traffic with this FortiGate CLI

    • diagnose sniffer packet port2 'host www.fortinet.com' 4 0 a

  4. 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

  5. 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
    northsouthping4
    FortiGate 0FortiGate 1
    fgtpingdiag5
    fgtpingdiag7

Continue to Chapter 5 - Task 3: Internet Inbound