57
Firewall Settings: Denial of Service
A Denial of Service attack is an attempt by a user (or users) to
make a server’s or network’s services unavailable.
The user
sends a server multiple requests with false return addresses.
The server will attempt to respond by sending a request back to
the user; however, since the address is false, the server will
wait for a response before closing the connection. When
multiple requests like this occur, servers may often get
overloaded with too many requests and stop functioning
altogether. This is a typical DoS attack, although DoS attacks
may not be limited to this type of attack.
The Router can assist in preventing these types of attacks by
scanning the network for patterns of activity that represent DoS
attacks. If a pattern comes in frequently, the Router can
attempt to block messages containing that pattern and thus
protect the server from becoming overloaded and
unresponsive.