What are Cato Sockets

• X1500 – Designed for small branches.
• X1600 / X1600 LTE – Designed for medium-sized branches. The LTE model provides resiliency and out-of-band connectivity.
• X1700 – High-performance appliance for large sites and on-premises data centers.
• vSocket – A virtual Socket deployed in public cloud platforms such as Azure and AWS, or in virtualized environments like GCP and VMware ESXi. vSockets provide secure connectivity for resources hosted outside physical branches or data centers.

This is a sample topology of X1500 and X1600 LTE sites:

• Understanding Cato's Managed Socket Upgrade Service
• Cato Socket Deployment Guides and Data Sheets
• Cato Socket: Deep Knowledge 

• MPLS site-to-site communication
• Redundancy using DTLS tunnels between Socket sites over the Internet when access to the Cato Cloud is temporarily unavailable
• Selective exclusion of specific traffic to bypass the Cato Cloud

• Routing Traffic to an Off-Cloud Link
• Socket Site Resiliency with WAN Recovery 

• Zero-touch provisioning simplifies setup by automatically connecting Sockets to the Cato Cloud without local configuration
• Policy-based orchestration applied globally
• Real-time monitoring, logging, and visibility across all connected sites

• Working with Socket Sites
• Managing Sockets 

• Multiple WAN link support – Each Socket can connect to multiple WAN transports (for example, fiber, broadband, LTE). Links can operate in Active/Active for load sharing or Active/Passive for failover.

  For example, a branch office uses two broadband circuits in parallel. The Socket distributes traffic across both links to increase throughput and automatically reroutes flows if one circuit experiences packet loss.

• Application-aware routing – Sockets classify traffic at the application level, applying policy-based routing (PBR) rules and QoS policies that ensure business-critical and latency-sensitive traffic is prioritized.

  For example, business applications such as Microsoft 365 are sent directly to the Internet from the branch, while all other traffic is routed through the Cato Cloud backbone for inspection and optimization.

• Path selection and remediation – Traffic is dynamically steered across available links based on performance metrics such as latency, packet loss, and jitter. When degradation is detected, the Socket automatically redirects flows to healthy paths.

  For example, a site running Microsoft Teams or Zoom meetings detects jitter on one ISP link. The Socket automatically shifts voice and video flows to a healthier path to maintain call quality.

• What are Network Rules
• Part 3: The Socket Traffic Prioritization and QoS 

• Application-aware routing with quality of service (QoS) enforcement
• SLA monitoring and health checks of WAN paths
• Dynamic path selection across multiple WAN links
• Prioritization of business-critical and latency-sensitive applications, including UCaaS and VoIP

• What are the Cato Bandwidth Management Profiles
• Accelerating and Optimizing Traffic 

• TCP acceleration to reduce round-trip delays
• Packet loss mitigation to improve reliability
• Duplicate packet transmission for real-time applications to reduce jitter
• UDP retransmission to improve the quality of voice and video traffic

• Accelerating and Optimizing Traffic
• Explaining the Cato TCP Acceleration and Best Practices 

• Policy enforcement - Admins can create rules to allow, block, or shape traffic based on source, destination, port, protocol, and application.

  For example, restricting IoT devices to only communicate with approved external services.

• Integration with the CMA -  The LAN Firewall policy is centrally defined in the CMA and automatically distributed to all relevant Sockets to ensure consistent enforcement across all sites.

• Segmentation - The LAN Firewall supports segmentation between different VLANs or subnets connected to a Socket, with policies to isolate or control access between business units, guest networks, or sensitive resources.

  For example, preventing guest Wi-Fi networks from accessing internal servers.

• Visibility and logging -  Socket LAN Firewall actions and events are logged in the CMA for monitoring and compliance.

• What is the Socket Next Gen LAN Firewall 

• Active/Active links - Each Socket can use multiple WAN links simultaneously. Traffic is distributed across active links to provide load balancing and increased throughput.
• Active/Passive links - In an Active/Passive configuration, a Socket designates one WAN link as primary and another as secondary. The Socket continuously monitors link status for both links and automatically activates the passive link if the primary link experiences a failure or performance degradation, ensuring uninterrupted service.
• High Availability with two Sockets - Deploy two Sockets in an active/standby pair for redundancy. If the active Socket fails, the standby device automatically takes over, minimizing downtime and maintaining traffic forwarding.

• Automatic failover between active and standby Sockets
• Load balancing and link resiliency with Active/Active WAN connections
• Health monitoring of Sockets and links to detect failures and trigger switchover
• Consistent configuration between HA peers managed through the CMA
• Support for both hardware and virtual Socket deployments

• What is Socket HA
• Understanding Acceptable and Unacceptable SLA for Sites
• Active/Active Traffic Distribution