A network administrator is reviewing firewall policies in both Interface Pair View and By Sequence View. The policies appear in a different order in each view. Why is the policy order different in these two views?

The FortiGate GUI offers different ways to visualize firewall policies. The 'By Sequence' view displays all policies in a single list, ordered numerically by their sequence ID. This view reflects the precise top-down order in which the FortiGate firewall engine evaluates policies. Conversely, the 'Interface Pair' view organizes policies into groups based on their source and destination interfaces. While policies within each interface-pair group are still ordered by their sequence ID, the overall view is segmented by these pairs, causing the apparent order to differ from the global processing sequence shown in the 'By Sequence' view.

A: Interface Pair View is grouped by interfaces, not arbitrary security levels. B: The order in Interface Pair View is determined by interface grouping, not traffic logs. C: Policy order is determined by administrator configuration and is not dynamically reordered by the firewall based on traffic patterns.

1. Fortinet FortiOS 7.6.0 Administration Guide

Page 678

Section: "Firewall policies > Viewing the firewall policies list".

The documentation states: "The firewall policies list can be viewed By Interface Pair or By Sequence. Viewing by interface pair groups policies by the configured incoming and outgoing interfaces. Viewing by sequence shows all policies in the order that they are checked for matching traffic." This directly confirms that 'By Sequence' shows the processing order and 'Interface Pair' groups by interfaces.