Is FortiLink a Gimmick

what is for link is it a gimmick do you know what it is do you know what its purpose is what underlying technologies is it is it all just a sham stay tuned and find out [Music] hey guys Mike here from fortinet guru it's been about two and a half three weeks since I've posted a video you guys know back in January I was in an accident I suffer from pretty serious headaches and migraines now because of it so anytime I fall off the map just assume that it's it's bad cuz they come in waves they get they're always there but they get significantly worse in waves either that or Fortinet has finally got pissed off enough at my videos that they kidnapped me and took me out somewhere and shot me right just kidding they wouldn't do that hopefully anyways so I get a lot of email I'm not a big channel by any means but I do post a lot of things that make people actually produce some level of response whether it's hate mail or love mail or questions about things that people are running into because I do have a fairly large number of use cases and experience and things that people just simply need help with so I get a lot of email and this one I got about a week ago five days ago or so from a guy named Josh and it kind of struck me so I figured I would read it and make a video about it because a lot of people probably have this question so josh sends me an email saying mike is it my imagination or does for the links suck if your switch is connected via for the link why can't you treat those ports like they're on the firewall instead of being separate devices instead it's just a glorified VLAN trunk bog-standard 802 1q it irritates me every time I set up a new system am I the only one who thinks this thanks Josh now I'm gonna leave Josh his last name out of this because he didn't sign up for him for himself to be subject of video and I certainly don't want him to get any unwarranted flack but yeah man you're taught well you're not the only one that thinks that when I first heard of the ability of a FortiGate managing a Fordyce which I was of the same it print up in or impression or idea right I thought hell yeah all the physical ports are going to show up under network interfaces I can control it all from there life will be great make one giant Hardware switch out of them just let it ride right and that's simply not the case for those of you that might not know as much about for the link and how it all works for de link is essentially VLAN tagging just like Josh said well for the link runs on VLAN tagging 802 one Q is the standard and basically I'm trying to figure out the best way to put this for link is like cap whack fear force which it lets you manage the switch they build a tunnel just which pulls this config from the FortiGate and then it just lets it ride that doesn't mean you get to treat a switch like it's actually part of the FortiGate though it does let you control it from the FortiGate now that did give a lot of people a lot of frustration when it first came out because they were of the impression that it was going to let them see all the physical ports on her network interfaces which is not the case now you can see all of the VLANs under network interfaces on your FortiGate but that's because just like we said it's 8:02 1q trunk configuration so it's got to live on the fortwo link interface and be able to go from there so yes for the link is not what you're expecting it to be Josh it's simply a management protocol so you can configure switch without having to SSH or web GUI to that device directly and hand jam stuff that way which is nice and as much as I hate to say it single pane of glass management which total marketing term I hate it but it does have some level of application here in the sense that you're managing it from a single point not a single page because you can't run it all from the network interfaces tab but yeah man you you can't log it from the FortiGate like it's part of the FortiGate if I mean you want to think of it like you know your brain is part of your body therefore it's all the same even though your you know your arms and legs aren't physically in your brain I don't know I did I thought that was going somewhere anyways but what I'm looking at right here is actually if you go to Google and you look up Fortis what managers which topologies or network topologies for manage for to switch this actually does the best job of telling it one it tells you all the different ways that you can cable up your four to switch and manage it but two it actually tells you exactly how it's laid out so FortiGate connects directly to each four to switch each of these four link ports is added to the logical Hardware switch or software switch interface on the FortiGate which means as far as physical interface configuration is concerned the only thing you can see under network and interfaces are the ports that belong to that Hardware switch or software switch you create and the VLANs that you tag on that optionally you can connect other devices to the FortiGate logical interface these devices must support ie 802 1q VLAN tagging and will have layer 2 connectivity with the for to switch ports so what does this mean this means if you have a device that supports 802 1q you can plug it into the 4 to link Hardware switch ports and as long as it's tagging the proper tags for the proper VLANs it'll communicate as though it's on your for switch in an example of this working is how many of you have ever had a for to switch that shows offline but it's still passing traffic exactly how it should that's right maybe your ntp server was not configured properly on your internal interface right and so your switch cap web tunnel keeps going down well since it's already connected long enough to post config it's still passing traffic because as far as the FortiGate is concerned at that point that switch is just a regular layer 2 switch doing the VLAN thing I know it's crazy and I get a lot of people that are like man my switch is showing off line but it's passing traffic stupid bug and it's almost always there damn NTP server not being set right for the interface but anyways yeah check out this page it has a long list of stuff it's Network topologies for manage for two switches the one that pops up by default is the 5.6 it absolutely is the same for various versions but it'll actually give you a complete rundown but yeah for the link isn't a gimmick for the link is a control mechanism that will basically utilizes protocols that have existed forever almost right they're not reinventing the wheel guys for de link is not some revolutionary thing that's changing the way the world is it's you know we had to will we invented engines for industrial things and then we took engines and wills and put them together to make cars it's just taken pre-existing protocols and finding a better way to use them to make life easier for the engineers and I'm not gonna fall forward in that for that and you know you guys know how throw some mud in a heartbeat if I think they're suspect I'm a big fan of for delink hell I even like using four to link over layer three which is a video that we're going to end up doing pretty soon the more you do that and more it just makes sense so if you like the video do me a favor hit the like button help that algorithm jive things up so others can find this video and learn about for the link if this is your first time seeing one of my videos do yourself a favor hit the subscribe button if you liked it that way you can actually get updates whenever new videos come out I usually post once or twice a week headaches allowing but um yeah if you guys have comments questions or you know you just want to talk smack in the comments below do me a favor post underneath and let me know what you think otherwise you guys be safe I know Cove has got the world pretty much upside down still and until next time see you [Music]

Channel: Fortinet Guru

Views: 7,510

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Id: rIxX9XsuE8A

Length: 9min 7sec (547 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 23 2020