Hardware Firewall

[BobtheCkroach]

Hey, I got a question for y'all. High speed internet is finally available in my neck of the woods, so I'm gonna be getting a constant connection sometime, next week. Since we now have constant connection, I have to actually start thinking about firewall...

Everyone says that a hardware firewall within the router is the best way to go, right?

I asked my dad about this, and we're not actually getting a router, but rather a DSL modem for his comp, which he will then run into the hub we have...and he said that our ISP says that provide a hardware firewall on their end, before it comes to us...

Do we still need one of our own, or is that enough? Or maybe, since they have one, is just running Windows firewall along w/ this ISP's firewall enough?

[JIMINATOR]

toss the hub, get a wireless router. they are dirt cheap any more. be sure to enable wep security on it. an isp can block all ports to your system, but it isn't something you can turn on or off, (only the isp would be able to) so you could never run a server, sam server, etc. i doubt this is the case, unless you are talking about cable with a NAT address, then you would not have an actual ip address or be able to receive incoming traffic. a hardware router is secure and not subject to exploits. The windows firewall is only secure enough until someone figures out another way to hack it like they did before SP2. And they will....

[Slice]

Your DSL modem probably has a firewall built in, as does mine.

[ZeLL]

while were on the subject... over the summer i visited my uncle in Ashland, Oregon. his town is hooked up to fiber optics. fastest sh1t i've seen. i brought my computer a long because my connection is only 140k up and down, so i took advantage and downloaded everything i could think of. but the second i hooked up my computer to his house, i got 5 viruses and 1 trojan. i actually brought this up before. my uncle did not have a router at the time, he just recently bought one. his computer was never affected because he had this tricked out G4 with that 22" LCD. soposably Macs dont get the same viruses and stuff because apple claims the firewire stuff is "built in". i have a router at home, so i never incounterd such a problem, what do you guys think.

[ME BIGGD01]

while were on the subject... over the summer i visited my uncle in Ashland, Oregon. his town is hooked up to fiber optics. fastest sh1t i've seen. i brought my computer a long because my connection is only 140k up and down, so i took advantage and downloaded everything i could think of. but the second i hooked up my computer to his house, i got 5 viruses and 1 trojan. i actually brought this up before. my uncle did not have a router at the time, he just recently bought one. his computer was never affected because he had this tricked out G4 with that 22" LCD. soposably Macs dont get the same viruses and stuff because apple claims the firewire stuff is "built in". i have a router at home, so i never incounterd such a problem, what do you guys think.

zell, the firewall will not prevent viruses at all. you may have had open ports in which the viruses came through but that's all i can imagine. on the other hand, you said you were downloading stuff and that is where you were pulling the viruses in. always be sure you have yur virus def's updated and i suggest mcafee's this year as the best virus software (i have done extensive testing) to protect yourself.

[ME BIGGD01]

Hey, I got a question for y'all. High speed internet is finally available in my neck of the woods, so I'm gonna be getting a constant connection sometime, next week. Since we now have constant connection, I have to actually start thinking about firewall...

Everyone says that a hardware firewall within the router is the best way to go, right?

I asked my dad about this, and we're not actually getting a router, but rather a DSL modem for his comp, which he will then run into the hub we have...and he said that our ISP says that provide a hardware firewall on their end, before it comes to us...

Do we still need one of our own, or is that enough? Or maybe, since they have one, is just running Windows firewall along w/ this ISP's firewall enough?

get a linksys router. if you have multiple pc's or plan on it, you can set them all to have internet access. also your isp can not block all ports so do not believe that and feel secure. do it yourself and block and unblock any ports you want. as far as running a server or even a web server, it is possible that your isp has blocked the known ports to do this lets use port 80 for example, you can configure your server to a different port to enable full access.

an example--if you wanted to run a webserver or ftp server but your isp blocked port 80 or port 21, you could change the port used to say port 70. to get into your server you would use the ip address along with the port you enabled for your server.

ex-if your ip was 66.66.123.122 you would use tis to conect to your server--66.66.123.122:70

i have posted a few tips for fs regarding security and if you look in the off topic section, i suggest you follow some of the things in that post which relates to securing your pc inside the firewall to add more security to your network.:thumbs:

[BobtheCkroach]

toss the hub, get a wireless router. they are dirt cheap any more. be sure to enable wep security on it. an isp can block all ports to your system, but it isn't something you can turn on or off, (only the isp would be able to) so you could never run a server, sam server, etc. i doubt this is the case, unless you are talking about cable with a NAT address, then you would not have an actual ip address or be able to receive incoming traffic. a hardware router is secure and not subject to exploits. The windows firewall is only secure enough until someone figures out another way to hack it like they did before SP2. And they will....

Just a basic wireless Router will have a hardware firewall in it? Say, for instance, a LinkSys BEFW11S4, as seen in the following link:

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=33-124-002&depa=0

if so, that'd be just swell, since we have that...

and if so, how do you configure it to wep security and all that stuff?

[ME BIGGD01]

will you be using wireless? if not i suggest disabling the wireless part if you have no use for it.

[BobtheCkroach]

will you be using wireless? if not i suggest disabling the wireless part if you have no use for it.

Yeah, my dad uses wireless for his laptop...so...that router has the built in hardware firewall to do what i need?

[ME BIGGD01]

do you have a bestbuy near you?

[BobtheCkroach]

do you have a bestbuy near you?

yessir

[JIMINATOR]

below is a screen where you can specify wep. essentially it prevents your neighbors from getting free internet. your dad will need to use the same key on both computers. there are other security methods more secure, but this works well and is standard.

in the second shot i show how to set up a port for sam. the ip address will be your sam computer. the router will assign ip addresses from x.x.x.100 up, but if you go into the computer tcpip settings and specify an ip address like this one (x.x.x.200), then the router will always assign it to the same computer. so unless you specify ports here, any port requests go nowhere. Additionally there is a DMZ setting. If you specify a computer there, it will always get all port requests, so it is probably not a good thing to use, unless say you had a linux server, but even then it would be better to use the Port forwarding for specific ports.

[BobtheCkroach]

Is a 500MHz machine enough to serve Sam (i seriously doubt it) because that's the only machine I have available for any serving.

[JIMINATOR]

that should be fine, but the greater problem is the bandwidth....