: Network > Interfaces > VLAN
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Network > Interfaces > VLAN

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Network > Interfaces > VLAN

A VLAN interface can provide routing into a Layer 3 network (IPv4 and IPv6). You can add one or more Layer 2 Ethernet ports (see PA-7000 Series Layer 2 Interface) to a VLAN interface.
VLAN Interface Settings
Configure In
Description
Interface Name
VLAN Interface
The read-only
Interface Name
is set to
vlan
. In the adjacent field, enter a numeric suffix (1 to 9,999) to identify the interface.
Comment
Enter an optional description for the interface.
Netflow Profile
If you want to export unidirectional IP traffic that traverses an ingress interface to a NetFlow server, select the server profile or click
Netflow Profile
to define a new profile (see Device > Server Profiles > NetFlow). Select
None
to remove the current NetFlow server assignment from the interface.
VLAN
VLAN Interface
Config
Select a VLAN or click
VLAN
to define a new one (see Network > VLANs). Select
None
to remove the current VLAN assignment from the interface.
Virtual Router
Assign a virtual router to the interface, or click
Virtual Router
to define a new one (see Network > Virtual Routers). Select
None
to remove the current virtual router assignment from the interface.
Virtual System
If the firewall supports multiple virtual systems and that capability is enabled, select a virtual system (vsys) for the interface or click
Virtual System
to define a new vsys.
Security Zone
Select a security zone for the interface, or click
Zone
to define a new zone. Select
None
to remove the current zone assignment from the interface.
For an IPv4 address
Type
VLAN Interface
IPv4
Select the method for assigning an IPv4 address type to the interface:
  • Static
    —You must manually specify the IP address.
  • DHCP Client
    —Enables the interface to act as a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) client and receive a dynamically assigned IP address.
Firewalls that are in a high availability (HA) active/active configuration don’t support DHCP Client.
Based on your IP address method selection, the options displayed in the tab will vary.
  • IPv4 address
    Type
    =
    Static
IP
VLAN Interface
IPv4
Click
Add
, then perform one of the following steps to specify a static IP address and network mask for the interface.
  • Type the entry in Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) notation: ip_address
    /
    mask (for example, 192.168.2.0/24).
  • Select an existing address object of type
    IP netmask
    .
  • Create an
    Address
    object of type
    IP netmask
    .
You can enter multiple IP addresses for the interface. The forwarding information base (FIB) your system uses determines the maximum number of IP addresses.
Delete
an IP address when you no longer need it.
IPv4 address
Type
=
DHCP
Enable
VLAN Interface
IPv4
Select to activate the DHCP client on the interface.
Automatically create default route pointing to default gateway provided by server
Select to automatically create a default route that points to the default gateway that the DHCP server provides.
Send Hostname
Select to configure the firewall (as a DHCP client) to send the hostname of the interface (Option 12) to the DHCP server. If you Send Hostname, then by default, the hostname of the firewall is the choice in the hostname field. You can send that name or enter a custom hostname (64 characters maximum including uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, periods, hyphens, and underscores.
Default Route Metric
For the route between the firewall and DHCP server, optionally enter a route metric (priority level) to associate with the default route and to use for path selection (range is 1 to 65,535; there is no default). The priority level increases as the numeric value decreases.
Show DHCP Client Runtime Info
Select to display all settings received from the DHCP server, including DHCP lease status, dynamic IP address assignment, subnet mask, gateway, and server settings (DNS, NTP, domain, WINS, NIS, POP3, and SMTP).
For an IPv6 address
Enable IPv6 on the interface
VLAN Interface
IPv6
Select to enable IPv6 addressing on this interface.
Interface ID
Enter the 64-bit extended unique identifier (EUI-64) in hexadecimal format (for example, 00:26:08:FF:FE:DE:4E:29). If you leave this field blank, the firewall uses the EUI-64 generated from the MAC address of the physical interface. If you enable the
Use interface ID as host portion
option when adding an address, the firewall uses the interface ID as the host portion of that address.
Address
VLAN Interface
IPv6 (cont)
Click
Add
and configure the following parameters for each IPv6 address:
  • Address
    —Enter an IPv6 address and prefix length (e.g. 2001:400:f00::1/64). You can also select an existing IPv6 address object or click
    Address
    to create an address object.
  • Enable address on interface
    —Select to enable the IPv6 address on the interface.
  • Use interface ID as host portion
    —Select to use the
    Interface ID
    as the host portion of the IPv6 address.
  • Anycast
    —Select to include routing through the nearest node.
  • Send RA
    —Select to enable router advertisement (RA) for this IP address. When you select this option, you must also globally
    Enable Router Advertisement
    on the interface. For details on RA, see Enable Router Advertisement.
    The remaining fields apply only if you enable RA.
    • Valid Lifetime
      —The length of time, in seconds, that the firewall considers the address as valid. The valid lifetime must equal or exceed the
      Preferred Lifetime
      . The default is 2,592,000.
    • Preferred Lifetime
      —The length of time, in seconds, that the valid address is preferred, which means the firewall can use it to send and receive traffic. After the preferred lifetime expires, the firewall cannot use the address to establish new connections but any existing connections are valid until they exceed the
      Valid Lifetime
      . The default is 604,800.
    • On-link
      —Select if systems with IP addresses within the advertised prefix are reachable without a router.
    • Autonomous
      —Select if systems can independently create an IP address by combining the advertised prefix with an interface ID.
Enable Duplication Address Detection
VLAN Interface
IPv6
Address Resolution
Select to enable duplicate address detection (DAD), which allows you to specify the number of
DAD
Attempts
.
DAD Attempts
Specify the number of DAD attempts within the neighbor solicitation interval (
NS Interval
) before the attempt to identify neighbors fails (range is 1 to 10; default is 1).
Reachable Time
Specify the length of time, in seconds, that a neighbor remains reachable after a successful query and response (range is 1 to 36,000; default is 30).
NS Interval (neighbor solicitation interval)
Specify the number of seconds for DAD attempts before failure is indicated (range is 1 to 10; default is 1).
Enable NDP Monitoring
Select to enable Neighbor Discovery Protocol monitoring. When enabled, you can select the NDP ( in Features column) and view information such as the IPv6 address of a neighbor the firewall has discovered, the corresponding MAC address and User-ID (on a best-case basis).
Enable Router Advertisement
VLAN Interface
IPv6
Router Advertisement
Select to provide Neighbor Discovery on IPv6 interfaces and configure the other fields in this section. IPv6 DNS clients that receive the router advertisement (RA) messages use this information.
RA enables the firewall to act as a default gateway for IPv6 hosts that are not statically configured and to provide the host with an IPv6 prefix for address configuration. You can use a separate DHCPv6 server in conjunction with this feature to provide DNS and other settings to clients.
This is a global setting for the interface. If you want to set RA options for individual IP addresses,
Add
an Address to the IP address table and configure it. If you set RA options for any IP address, you must
Enable Router Advertisement
for the interface.
Min Interval (sec)
Specify the minimum interval, in seconds, between RAs that the firewall will send (range is 3 to 1,350; default is 200). The firewall will send RAs at random intervals between the minimum and maximum values you configure.
Max Interval (sec)
Specify the maximum interval, in seconds, between RAs that the firewall will send (range is 4 to 1,800; default is 600). The firewall will send RAs at random intervals between the minimum and maximum values you configure.
Hop Limit
Specify the hop limit to apply to clients for outgoing packets (range is 1 to 255; default is 64). Enter
0
for no hop limit.
Link MTU
Specify the link maximum transmission unit (MTU) to apply to clients. Select
unspecified
for no link MTU (range is 1,280 to 9,192; default is unspecified).
Reachable Time (ms)
Specify the reachable time, in milliseconds, that the client will use to assume a neighbor is reachable after receiving a reachability confirmation message. Select
unspecified
for no reachable time value (range is 0 to 3,600,000; default is unspecified).
Retrans Time (ms)
Specify the retransmission timer that determines how long the client will wait (in milliseconds) before retransmitting neighbor solicitation messages. Select
unspecified
for no retransmission time (range is 0 to 4,294,967,295; default is unspecified).
Router Lifetime (sec)
Specify how long, in seconds, the client will use the firewall as the default gateway (range is 0 to 9,000; default is 1,800). Zero specifies that the firewall is not the default gateway. When the lifetime expires, the client removes the firewall entry from its Default Router List and uses another router as the default gateway.
Router Preference
If the network segment has multiple IPv6 routers, the client uses this field to select a preferred router. Select whether the RA advertises the firewall router as having a
High
,
Medium
(default), or
Low
priority relative to other routers on the segment.
Managed Configuration
Select to indicate to the client that addresses are available via DHCPv6.
Other Configuration
Select to indicate to the client that other address information (for example, DNS-related settings) is available via DHCPv6.
Consistency Check
VLAN Interface
IPv6
Router Advertisement (cont)
Select if you want the firewall to verify that RAs sent from other routers are advertising consistent information on the link. The firewall logs any inconsistencies in a system log; the type is
ipv6nd
.
Include DNS information in Router Advertisement
VLAN Interface
IPv6
DNS Support
Select for the firewall to send DNS information in NDP router advertisements from this IPv6 VLAN interface. The other DNS Support fields in this table are visible only after you select this option.
Server
Add
one or more recursive DNS (RDNS) server addresses for the firewall to send in NDP router advertisements from this IPv6 VLAN interface. RDNS servers send a series of DNS lookup requests to root DNS servers and authoritative DNS servers to ultimately provide an IP address to the DNS client.
You can configure a maximum of eight RDNS servers that the firewall sends— in the order listed from top to bottom—in an NDP router advertisement to the recipient, which then uses them in the same order. Select a server and
Move Up
or
Move Down
to change the order of the servers or
Delete
a server from the list when you no longer need it.
Lifetime
Enter the maximum number of seconds after the IPv6 DNS client receives the router advertisement that it can use the RDNS servers to resolve domain names (range is the value of Max Interval (sec) to twice the Max Interval; default is 1,200).
Suffix
Add
and configure one or more domain names (suffixes) for the DNS search list (DNSSL). The maximum suffix length is 255 bytes.
A DNS search list is a list of domain suffixes that a DNS client router appends (one at a time) to an unqualified domain name before it enters the name into a DNS query, thereby using a fully qualified domain name in the DNS query. For example, if a DNS client tries to submit a DNS query for the name “quality” without a suffix, the router appends a period and the first DNS suffix from the DNS search list to the name and then transmits the DNS query. If the first DNS suffix on the list is “company.com”, the resulting DNS query from the router is for the fully qualified domain name “quality.company.com”.
If the DNS query fails, the router appends the second DNS suffix from the list to the unqualified name and transmits a new DNS query. The router tries DNS suffixes until a DNS lookup is successful (ignores the remaining suffixes) or until the router has tried all of suffixes on the list.
Configure the firewall with the suffixes that you want to provide to the DNS client router in a Neighbor Discovery DNSSL option; the DNS client receiving the DNSSL option uses the suffixes in its unqualified DNS queries.
You can configure a maximum of eight domain names (suffixes) for a DNS search list that the firewall sends—in order listed from top to bottom—in an NDP router advertisement to the recipient, which uses those addresses in the same order. Select a suffix and
Move Up
or
Move Down
to change the order or
Delete
a suffix from the list when you no longer need it.
Lifetime
Enter the maximum number of seconds after the IPv6 DNS client receives the router advertisement that it can use a domain name (suffix) on the DNS search list (range is the value of Max Interval (sec) to twice the Max Interval; default is 1,200).
Management Profile
VLAN Interface
Advanced
Other Info
Management Profile
—Select a profile that defines the protocols (for example, SSH, Telnet, and HTTP) you can use to manage the firewall over this interface. Select
None
to remove the current profile assignment from the interface.
MTU
Enter the maximum transmission unit (MTU) in bytes for packets sent on this interface (range is 576 to 9,192; default is 1,500). If machines on either side of the firewall perform Path MTU Discovery (PMTUD) and the interface receives a packet exceeding the MTU, the firewall returns an ICMP fragmentation needed message to the source indicating the packet is too large.
Adjust TCP MSS
Select to adjust the maximum segment size (MSS) to accommodate bytes for any headers within the interface MTU byte size. The MTU byte size minus the MSS Adjustment Size equals the MSS byte size, which varies by IP protocol:
  • IPv4 MSS Adjustment Size
    —Range is 40 to 300; default is 40.
  • IPv6 MSS Adjustment Size
    —Range is 60 to 300; default is 60.
Use these settings to address the case where a
tunnel
through the network requires a smaller MSS. If a packet has more bytes than the MSS without fragmentation, this setting enables the adjustment.
Encapsulation adds length to headers, so it helps to configure the MSS adjustment size to allow bytes for such things as an MPLS header or tunneled traffic that has a VLAN tag.
IP Address
MAC Address
Interface
VLAN Interface
Advanced
ARP Entries
To add one or more static Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) entries, click
Add
and enter an IP address, enter its associated hardware [media access control (MAC)] address, and select a Layer 3 interface that can access the hardware address. To delete an entry, select the entry and click
Delete
. Static ARP entries reduce ARP processing and preclude man-in-the-middle attacks for the specified addresses.
IPv6 Address
MAC Address
VLAN Interface
Advanced
ND Entries
To provide neighbor information for Neighbor Discovery Protocol (NDP), click
Add
and enter the IPv6 address and MAC address of the neighbor.
Enable NDP Proxy
VLAN Interface
Advanced
NDP Proxy
Select to enable Neighbor Discovery Protocol (NDP) Proxy for the interface. The firewall will respond to ND packets requesting MAC addresses for IPv6 addresses in this list. In the ND response, the firewall sends its own MAC address for the interface, and is basically saying, “send me the packets meant for these addresses.”
(
Recommended
) Enable NDP Proxy if you are using Network Prefix Translation IPv6 (NPTv6).
If you
Enable NDP Proxy
, you can filter numerous
Address
entries: first enter a filter and then apply it (green arrow).
Address
Add
one or more IPv6 addresses, IP ranges, IPv6 subnets, or address objects for which the firewall will act as NDP Proxy. Ideally, one of these addresses is the same address as that of the source translation in NPTv6. The order of addresses does not matter.
If the address is a subnetwork, the firewall will send an ND response for all addresses in the subnet, so we recommend you also add the firewall’s IPv6 neighbors and then click
Negate
to instruct the firewall not to respond to these IP addresses.
Negate
Select
Negate
for an address to prevent NDP proxy for that address. You can negate a subset of the specified IP address range or IP subnet.
Settings
VLAN Interface
Advanced
DDNS
Select Settings to make the DDNS fields available to configure.
Enable
Enable DDNS on the interface. You must initially enable DDNS to configure it. (If your DDNS configuration is unfinished, you can save it without enabling it so that you don’t lose your partial configuration.)
Update Interval (days)
Enter the interval (in days) between updates that the firewall sends to the DDNS server to update IP addresses mapped to FQDNs (range is 1 to 30; default is 1).
The firewall also updates DDNS upon receiving a new IP address for the interface from the DHCP server.
Certificate Profile
Select a Certificate Profile that you created (or create a new one) to verify the DDNS service. The DDNS service presents the firewall with a certificate signed by the certificate authority (CA).
Hostname
Enter a hostname for the interface, which is registered with the DDNS Server (for example, host123.domain123.com, or host123). The firewall does not validate the hostname except to confirm that the syntax uses valid characters allowed by DNS for a domain name.
Vendor
Select the DDNS vendor (and version number) that provides DDNS service to this interface:
  • DuckDNS v1
  • DynDNS v1
  • FreeDNS Afraid.org Dynamic API v1
  • FreeDNS Afraid.org v1
  • No-IP v1
If you select an older version of a DDNS service that the firewall indicates will be phased out by a certain date, move to the newer version.
The
Name
and
Value
fields that follow the vendor name are vendor-specific. Some fields are read-only to notify you of the parameters that the firewall uses to connect to the DDNS service. Configure the other fields, such as a password that the DDNS service provides to you and a timeout the firewall uses if it doesn’t receive a response from the DDNS server.
IPv4 tab - IP
Add the IPv4 addresses configured on the interface and select them. All selected IP addresses are registered with the DDNS provider (Vendor).
IPv6 tab - IPv6
VLAN Interface
Advanced
DDNS
(cont)
Add the IPv6 addresses configured on the interface and select them. All selected IP addresses are registered with the DDNS provider (Vendor).
Show Runtime Info
Displays the DDNS registration: DDNS provider, resolved FQDN, and the mapped IP address(es) with an asterisk (*) indicating the primary IP address. Each DDNS provider has its own return codes to indicate the status of the hostname update, and a return date, for troubleshooting purposes.

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