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Sophos Firewall Web

Protection Quotas and
Traffic Shaping

Sophos Firewall
Version: 20.0v1

[Additional Information]

Sophos Firewall
FW4030: Sophos Firewall Web protection Quotas and Traffic Shaping

January 2024
Version: 20.0v1

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Sophos Firewall Web Protection Quotas and Traffic Shaping

In this chapter you will learn how
to use web policy rule quotas,
surfing quotas and traffic shaping
to control web access.
RECOMMENDED KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE
✓ How to configure web protection on Sophos
Firewall
✓ How to access the traffic shaping settings on
Sophos Firewall

DURATION 7 minutes

In this chapter you will learn how to use web policy rule quotas, surfing quotas and traffic shaping to
control web access.

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Quotas and Traffic Shaping

Web policy rule quotas (category and time-based)

Surfing quotas (time-based)

Traffic shaping (bandwidth-based)

Sophos Firewall can control web access in three ways; Using the quota action in web policy rules.
Applying surfing quotas to groups of users, and applying traffic shaping policies.

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Web Policy Rule Quotas

Choose which activities should have a

quota restriction

In the web policy you can set rules to apply a quota action. This will apply to all activities in that rule.

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Web Policy Rule Quotas

Configure how much quota
time users have per day

Further down in the policy you can configure how much quota time users have per day. All quota
activities share the same pool of quota time.

When a user accesses an activity with a quota, they are asked how much quota time to use now. This
is to prevent quota time being exhausted by websites updating in the background.

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Surfing Quotas
Surfing quotas are applied to users and groups

Surfing quotas are applied to users and groups and are another way to control the amount of time
spent on the Internet. Unlike web policy rule quotas, surfing quotas apply to all Internet traffic.

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Surfing Quotas
Surfing quotas are applied to users and groups

Surfing quotas define an amount of surfing time, which can either be a single amount of time or cyclic,
where the surfing time is reset on a schedule.

Surfing quotas can also have a validity period, which could be useful to guest users. The validity period
defines how long the quota is active for.

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Simulation: Create a Surfing Quota for Guest Users

In this simulation you will configure a surfing quota for

guest users and apply it to the ‘Guest Group’. You will
create a guest user and test your quota policy.

LAUNCH SIMULATION CONTINUE

https://training.sophos.com/fw/simulation/SurfingQuota/2/start.html

Please complete this simulation.

Click Launch Simulation to start. Once you have finished, click Continue.

[Additional Information]
https://training.sophos.com/fw/simulation/SurfingQuota/2/start.html

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Traffic Shaping

Traffic shaping does not limit the amount of time or data, instead it can either limit or guarantee how
much bandwidth will be available.

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Traffic Shaping

Sophos Firewall supports traffic shaping for several types of policy. In this context, the traffic shaping
would be applied to web categories, but can be applied to users and groups, firewall rules and
applications.

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Traffic Shaping

Applying the traffic shaping

policy to the new category

The example shows a new web category that has been created for www.example.com and has the
traffic shaping policy applied.

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Chapter Review

Using web policies, you can include rules to apply a quota action to all activities within he rule. When a
user accesses an activity with a quota, they are asked how much time to use.

Surfing quotas are applied to users and groups. Unlike web policy rule quotas apply to all Internet traffic.

Traffic shaping does not limit the amount of time or data. Instead, it can either limit or guarantee how
much bandwidth will be available. As well as web categories, it can be applied to users and groups,
firewall rules and applications.

Here are the main things you learned in this chapter.

Using web policies, you can include rules to apply a quota action to all activities within the rule. When
a user accesses an activity with a quota, they are asked how much time to use.

Surfing quotas are applied to users and groups. Unlike web policy rule quotas, surfing quotas apply to
all Internet traffic.

Traffic shaping does not limit the amount of time or data. Instead, it can either limit or guarantee how
much bandwidth will be available. As well as web categories, it can be applied to users and groups,
firewall rules and applications.

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