About MAC Filtering

Topics:
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Effect of MAC Filtering on Authentication
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Deployment Considerations

Effect of MAC Filtering on Authentication

Wireless networking provides native MAC filtering capabilities that prevent wireless clients from authenticating and associating with the wireless security appliance. If you enforce MAC filtering on the WLAN, wireless clients must provide you with the MAC address of their wireless networking card. The SonicOS wireless MAC Filter List allows you to configure a list of clients that are allowed or denied access to your wireless network. Without MAC filtering, any wireless client can join your wireless network if they know the SSID and perhaps other security parameters to “break into” your wireless network.

Figure 22 displays a typical Dell SonicWALL MAC Filter List deployment scenario:

Figure 22. Typical SonicWALL MAC filter list deployment

Deployment Considerations

Consider the following when deploying the MAC Filter List:

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For the SonicPoint-N appliance, this feature requires the gateway to store the MAC Filer List settings.
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For the Dell SonicWALL TZ series appliance’s internal wireless, some members need to be added to the VAP structure to store the MAC Filter List settings and the complete function should be modified to set the configurations to the driver.
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MAC Filter List configurations are added to the Wireless Virtual Access Point (VAP) profile settings. They can be view by navigating to the Wireless > Virtual Access Point page.