Edge Filters are an additional layer of advanced protection you can apply to your servers, working together with the Edge Firewall. They are designed to further refine incoming traffic, allowing you to define exactly which protocol and port your service uses, and apply layer 7 (application) validations on that traffic.
This not only enhances security against volumetric attacks, but also protects against more sophisticated threats such as low-speed attacks, which often go unnoticed by conventional firewalls.
What can you do with Edge Filters?
With Edge Filters you can:
- Validate specific protocols for game servers.
- Associate that validation to a specific port.
- Improve protection against DDoS by performing deep traffic inspection.
- Combine them with the Edge Firewall for even more granular traffic control.
Create a filter in Edge Filters
Go to the Clouding portal and click on the server, then select the Anti-DDoS tab. From there, you can manage the Edge Filters.
To create a new rule, click on the orange button on the right. In this section you can create a filter to specify the exact protocol your server uses. The data to be filled in will depend on the type of application you want to filter.
For example, if you have a game server for Quake 3, you can create a specific filter on port 27015, which will validate only legitimate traffic of that protocol and automatically discard any malicious or unrecognized connection attempts.
After applying the changes, you will see your new filter listed under the active Edge Filters.
Usage recommendations
- Make sure you know the exact protocol your application/game uses before applying a filter.
- You can combine multiple filters if your server listens on several ports with different protocols.
- Regularly check the statistics and traffic tab to verify that the filter is working as expected.
Conclusion
Edge Filters are a key tool to strengthen your server's security against increasingly complex attacks. By allowing you to define precise filters based on protocol and port, they become an effective shield against unwanted or malicious traffic. Combined with the Edge Firewall, they offer you exhaustive control over incoming traffic, reducing the risk of service interruptions due to attacks and improving overall service stability.