Introduction (4.0)
Say that you have arrived at your grandparents’ residence. It is a beautiful gated community with walking paths and gardens. For the safety of the residents, no one is permitted to get into the community without stopping at the gate and presenting the guard with identification. You provide your ID, and the guard verifies that you are expected as a visitor. He documents your information and lifts the gate. Imagine if the guard had to do this for the many staff members who entered each day. The security department has simplified this process by assigning a badge to each employee that can be scanned to automatically raise the gate. You greet your grandparents, who are anxiously awaiting you at the front desk. You all get back into the car to go down the street for dinner. As you exit the parking lot, you must again stop and show your identification so that the guard will lift the gate. Rules have been put in place for all incoming and outgoing traffic.
Much like the guard in the gated community, an access control list (ACL) may be configured to permit and deny network traffic passing through an interface. The router compares the information within a packet against each access control entry (ACE), in sequential order, to determine if the packet matches one of the ACEs. This process is called packet filtering. Let’s learn more!