Firewall Types Compared: Stateful vs Stateless, IDS vs IPS

Which firewall fits this scenario?

The seven firewall types · click any to see what it does

Stateful vs Stateless

A stateless firewall checks each packet in isolation, so it needs an explicit rule for every direction. A stateful firewall remembers connections it has seen and automatically allows the return traffic. Almost every modern firewall is stateful.

Which network defense is this?

DMZ: where the public stuff goes

A semi-trusted zone sits between the internet and the trusted internal network. Public servers (web, mail, DNS) live here so a compromise does not immediately reach internal systems.

Internet

Untrusted, hostile by default.

EVERYONE

→Firewall

DMZ

Semi-trusted. Hosts services reachable from the internet.

Public web, mail relay, public DNS

→Firewall

Internal

Trusted. Workstations, databases, internal apps.

Employees, internal apps

Network defenses cheat sheet

IDS

Detects and alerts. Sits out-of-band. Does not block.

IPS

Detects, alerts, AND blocks. Sits inline in the traffic path.

NAT

Translates private IP addresses to a public IP. Hides internal addressing.

PAT

Many internal hosts share one public IP by tracking source ports. Home routers do this.

Forward proxy

Acts on behalf of clients. Used for content filtering and caching.

Reverse proxy

Acts on behalf of servers. Used for load balancing and TLS handling.

VLAN

Logically splits one switch into multiple broadcast domains for segmentation.

Segmentation

Splits the network into zones so a compromise in one zone does not roam everywhere.