Best Practices for Endpoint

Before you install BloxOne Endpoint, ensure that you check the following, otherwise endpoint might not function properly:

• When installing BloxOne Endpoint from an install package, do ensure the install package was downloaded from the correct Organization in the Cloud Services Portal. The install package contains a Customer ID that defines what organization the endpoint will be assigned.
• It is recommended to not disable or delete any active devices that currently have BloxOne Endpoint installed via the Cloud Services Portal. If the device is removed from the CSP, the client device will not be protected, and the device will not show up on the CSP’s Endpoints page.
• Your host machine must have enough capacity to run endpoint. On average, endpoint consumes less than 0.5% of CPU and less than 50 MB of memory. Note that these numbers vary based on the host hardware configuration.
• Your local device is not running any DNS service.
• If your device is running MAC OS X, ensure that you turn off Internet Sharing.
• Do not apply any firewall rules to block TCP port 443 due to the following:
  
  • Endpoint should be able to access the Infoblox geo-based Anycast IP addresses using TCP port 443 as mentioned here. 
  • Endpoint must be able to access the following using TCP port 443:
    • 52.119.40.100
    • 52.119.41.100
    • 103.80.5.100
    • 103.80.6.100
  • Endpoint must be able to access the following using TCP port 443: 
    
    • csp.infoblox.com
    • threatdefense.infoblox.com and its subdomains
  • Endpoint listens on port 53 on the device's 127.0.0.2 loopback address
• Do not apply any firewall rules to block UDP port 53 due to the following:
  • Endpoint must be able to access 52.119.40.100 and 103.80.5.100 using UDP port 53. The UDP port 53 query is used to identify (1) the public IP address of the endpoint and (2) the AWS region to which endpoint is connected.
• Allow HTTPS traffic to s3.dualstack.us-east-1.amazonaws.com where us-east-1 can change based on the region setting for auto upgrade. You must allow HTTPS traffic to access s3.dualstack.us-east-1.amazonaws.com to automatically upgrade endpoint.
• If you have a VPN client, ensure that the VPN connection is established in the “Split tunnel” mode for every network protocol (IPv4 or IPv4/IPv6 for dual stack).
  
  

No Internet Access Warning Message in Windows

In some rare circumstances, BloxOne Endpoint can make Windows incorrectly display a “No Internet Access” warning, although the connectivity is working fine. This is caused by a limitation in Microsoft Network Connectivity Status Indicator (NCSI) feature.

NCSI uses Active DNS probes to validate internet connectivity on each network interface. However, these DNS checks are restricted and NCSI will refuse to send them to a DNS server on a different interface (such as the loopback IP). Since BloxOne Endpoint runs a DNS forwarder on the loopback interface as part of its core operation, these specific checks are not compatible with endpoint. This limitation does not cause any problem in majority of the environments, because Windows also performs some other checks to validate the connectivity.

To remedy this situation if it occurs in your configuration, do the following.  NOTE: This fix must be deployed to the Local Group Policy. 

1. Locate gpedit.msc. The setting for gpedit.msc within "Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Network > Network Connectivity Status Indicator".
2. Enable the 'Specify Global DNS' setting.
   
3. Run gpupdate /force. 
4. Reboot your system. A reboot is required to clear the existing issue.