Bluesocket WG-400 Wireless Gateway

Bluesocket has a strong presence in the wireless security appliance market, but it has traditionally focused on mid- to enterprise-level businesses. SMEs now come into the picture, as the WG-400 Wireless Gateway targets smaller companies looking to secure their wireless networks.

The WG-400 works by providing authentication services to wireless users to ensure they can only access those facilities they're allowed to. You can create accounts on the appliance for each user and assign them to security policies that list the destinations and resources they can access. There's more, as the WG-400 also provides support for VPNs and wireless traffic management by implementing bandwidth limits.

Physically, the WG-400 isn't very exciting, with a basic hardware specification in the driving seat. Five Fast Ethernet ports are provided, with the separate private port connected to the wired network. The other four can have wireless access points (APs) attached directly or more can be cascaded via a separate hub or switch. In terms of AP support, the WG-400 should work with any model, as it's merely providing a conduit through which all wireless access is passed. Clients associate with an AP in the normal manner, but before they can reach the private network beyond, the appliance can present them with a new logon screen and place restrictions on what they can access. We successfully ran tests using Proxim ORiNOCO AP-2000 and 3Com Series 8000 APs.

Take your time with installation. There are a number of options for the wired and wireless sides of the WG-400 and a myriad of facilities for access control. You need to get all your DHCP server and static IP address requirements sorted and make sure no other routes are left open for wireless clients to reach the LAN. Patience is required when configuring the appliance's network interfaces, since most changes require a system restart, which takes minutes to complete.

The task flow for creating access controls starts by selecting authorisation methods and assigning roles to them. This allows you to enforce VPN connections if required and set QoS parameters that determine the amount of incoming and outgoing bandwidth the user is allowed. You can also assign up to six policies that allow or deny traffic for specific services or network destinations, which are defined as role elements. Even individual service such as HTTP, POP3 and FTP can have global limitations on packets-per-second throughput assigned. Schedules may also be used to determine when access is allowed and these can apply to specific times, days, weeks and months.

From the user's perspective, when they log onto an AP and try to access network resources they may be presented with a login screen, depending on the authorisation method chosen. If you're using the local database, LDAP or RADIUS authentication, a customisable web login page will be presented to them. Once they've been accepted, a small pop-up window remains on their screen that provides quick access for logging out of the appliance. For MAC-based, NTLM, Active Directory and 802.1x authentication, the entire process is transparent to the user.

Although we found the installation phase tedious and management interface performance slow, it's clear the WG-400 offers a lot of control over your wireless users, with support for a wide range of authentication methods.

Author: Dave Mitchell