Users Guide

Dell PowerConnect ArubaOS 5.0 | User Guide] Roles and Policies | 279
Chapter 10
Roles and Policies
Every client in a Dell user-centric network is associated with a user role, which determines the client’s network
privileges, how often it must re-authenticate, and which bandwidth contracts are applicable. A policy is a set of
rules that applies to traffic that passes through the Dell controller. You specify one or more policies for a user role.
Finally, you can assign a user role to clients before or after they authenticate to the system.
This chapter describes assigning and creating roles and policies using the ArubaOS CLI or WebUI. Roles and
policies can also be configured for WLANs associated with the “default” ap-group via the WLAN Wizard:
Configuration > Wizards > WLAN Wizard. Follow the steps in the workflow pane within the wizard and refer to
the help tab for assistance.
This chapter describes the following topics:
z “Policies” on page279
z “Creating a Firewall Policy” on page280
z “Creating an ACL White List” on page282
z “User Roles” on page283
z “User Role Assignments” on page286
z “Global Firewall Parameters” on page289
Policies
A firewall policy identifies specific characteristics about a data packet passing through the Dell controller and
takes some action based on that identification. In an Dell controller, that action can be a firewall-type action such
as permitting or denying the packet, an administrative action such as logging the packet, or a quality of service
(QoS) action such as setting 802.1p bits or placing the packet into a priority queue. You can apply firewall policies
to user roles to give differential treatment to different users on the same network, or to physical ports to apply the
same policy to all traffic through the port.
Firewall policies differ from access control lists (ACLs) in the following ways:
z Firewall policies are stateful, meaning that they recognize flows in a network and keep track of the state of
sessions. For example, if a firewall policy permits telnet traffic from a client, the policy also recognizes that
inbound traffic associated with that session should be allowed.
z Firewall policies are bi-directional, meaning that they keep track of data connections traveling into or out of
the network. ACLs are normally applied to either traffic inbound to an interface or outbound from an
interface.
z Firewall policies are dynamic, meaning that address information in the policy rules can change as the policies
are applied to users. For example, the alias user in a policy automatically applies to the IP address assigned to
a particular user. ACLs typically require static IP addresses in the rule.
Note: This chapter describes configuring firewall policies and parameters that relate to IPv4 traffic. See Chapter 28, “IPv6 Client
Support” on page535 for information about configuring IPv6 firewall policies and parameters.
Note: You can apply IPv4 and IPv6 firewall policies to the same user role. See Chapter 28, “IPv6 Client Support” on page535
for information about configuring IPv6 firewall policies.