Skip to main content
shaw38
New Member
Feb 14, 2025 9:14 PM UTC
Question

Flow based VS Proxy Based

I know the differences between using flow based vs proxy based.

I recently switched all our profiles and rules over to flow based to see if this was causing slowness in the response times users were seeing. It ended up being a DNS server issue after I took packet captures and saw the DNS queries were getting server failures half the time.

Generally just curious if people are using flow based out there or proxy based in your environments!

1 reply

AEK
SuperUser
SuperUser
Feb 15, 2025 8:33 AM UTC

Flow based are faster and adapted to most use cases.

Proxy based is mandatory when you use WAF profile or mail filter profile (for incoming traffic), and for advanced features like video filter, safe search and so.

Check this doc:

https://docs.fortinet.com/document/fortigate/6.2.16/cookbook/721410/about-inspection-modes

Note this doc is for FOS 6.2 but basically it is still almost the same.

Translate
AEK
Risk and Resilience in the Age of AI. An OT Thought Leadership Summit for Houston's Critical Infrastructure Leaders. Date: Thursday, December 3, 2026. Time: 8:30 am - 1:30 pm (CT). Location: The Westin Houston, Memorial City | 945 Gessner Road, Houston, TX 77024