Difference between ACL and Firewall

Rashmi Bhardwaj | Blog,BUZZ,Security
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While deploying security solutions in setups, administrators may be challenged with verdict on whether to consider ACL (Access Control List) or use Firewall to secure the LAN Network setup. From a Bird’s eye view, it may seem that ACL also filter the traffic (mostly LAN and WAN communication) like Firewalls do. However, there is more to it than meets the eye – Firewalls are much more than just traffic filtering.

Key Differences between ACL and Firewall

  • To start with, Firewalls perform Stateful inspection while ACLs are limited to being Stateless only. Stateful is a per-flow packet inspection, whereas Stateless (ACL) is a per-packet packet inspection. In other words, ‘state’ of flow is tracked and remembered by traditional firewall.
  • In fact firewalls can also understand the TCP SYN and SYN-ACK packets which can’t be performed by ACL on Routers or Layer 3 Switches. In addition to address/port matching and connection state management, many more advanced firewalls are able to use deep packet inspection to track application-layer behaviour.

Related – Stateful and Stateless Firewall

  • Firewalls can be software or hardware based. Hardware based firewalls are preferred choice when it comes to large deployments requiring dedicated appliances to address security requirements.
  • Unlike Firewalls, ACLs are features on Routers and Layer 3 devices.
  • Further, ACLs (Standard or extended) can perform traffic control up to Layer 4 i.e. ports and protocols while Firewalls can reach up to Layer 7 (Application Layer) of OSI model.

Watch related video for Detailed Explanation:

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Comparison Table: ACL and Firewall

Below table illustrates difference between ACL and Firewall –

Related- Using ACL to mitigate IP Address Spoofing

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