firewalls

What's the difference between "user traffic" and "local-out traffic" on a FortiGate?

A quick refresh on some more FortiGate terms.

Mike Berggren

Mike Berggren

— 1 min read
What's the difference between "user traffic" and "local-out traffic" on a FortiGate?
Photo by Sigmund / Unsplash
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This is part of an on-going series in cybersecurity foundations. Check the cyber 101 article tag index from time to time for more content.

Today's article is a quick one. Let's chat about the concepts of "user traffic" and "local-out" terms as they pertain to FortiGates.

There's really just a couple essential points to keep in mind:

  • When a FortiGate is operating in Network Address Translation (NAT) mode, it functions as an IP router. It's directing traffic to various IP networks.
  • There are two types of traffic that could be leaving the firewall:
    • Local-out traffic - This is traffic that is generated by the firewall itself. This could be things like requests for FortiGuard updates... or connectivity diagnostics run from the FortiGate itself.
    • User traffic - Sometimes referred to generically as "firewall traffic" (I know, confusing right?). This is just a label for the data traffic going through the firewall (but originating elsewhere).

FortiGate performs routing for both types of traffic. Simple, right? I told ya, today's article is a quick one 😄.

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