Posted by Vince on 11/3/2009, 4:01 am, in reply to "Firewalls"
68.144.14.16
Think of a firewall as a wall around your "village".
A router is a firewall around your village. That means ...absolutely NO ONE from outside of that wall (the internet) can come into your village.
On the INSIDE of the wall, the router provides 4 wire ports to hook up 4 separate computers. But ADDITIONALLY, the router has a broadcasting/receiving antenna which can communicate with anyone in the village, having a wireless card in their laptop or computer.
So the 4 wire ports plus the wireless .... are all INSIDE of the wall.
The wall has a gate and anyone can go OUT of the gate onto the internet. They make connection with websites and by initiating connection, they bring stuff with them INTO the village (to their own machines). So anyone going out of the gate can bring friends back in through the gate.
It's these "friends" you have to be careful about because they can turn out to be malicious.
You go OUT to the internet to browse and to GET your email. Both of those sources can bring you trojans, worms and viruses. The firewall in the router can do nothing to stop such things because YOU invited them through the gate yourself.
Now think about INSIDE of the wall, in the village ...
If you have a router with its wireless turned on but NOT secured -(that means you never set any password for the router and you are not using WPA encryption but maybe weak WEP encryption)- ANYONE in the village can connect to your wireless section and become part of your "family." Now THESE unknown people could turn out to be hackers or spreading malicious stuff so ....... you always want to make SURE your wireless is not running away scott free and unsecured.
Now you get into a computer firewall....
It's essentially the same thing as a router firewall but it isolates YOUR computer. So-o if you're behind a router and use your computer firewall, you are inside of a walled village with a wall around your own machine as well.
Nothing can get into your computer through the computer operating system firewall. You can still go OUT ....... through the gate and then through the router gate to the internet without any hassles but ..... no one can come IN to your computer unless you allow it. You can still get malicious stuff if YOU bring it in by your own "invitation." So you still have to be wary and careful when running a computer firewall because it won't protect you against your own follies. It only stops unsolicited calls from getting through to your machine. No one can get into your machine by hacking or tampering.
Here then, is my own advice on firewall use ...
If you're behind a router and you have your wireless well secured so that ONLY you and your family know the password for the router wireless ......... you don't need any computer firewall running.
Personal firewalls are a pain in the butt because they often interfere with computers connecting to each other in the same household. I've spent hours sometimes, trying to make something work across machines and finally discovered that the computer FIREWALL was on and preventing the transactions. If the dang firewall would AT LEAST pop a message to announce that it was blocking ....... I could quickly go in and make an allowance in the firewall, but no ........ absolutely no signal given that it was blocking my activities.
If you DON'T have a router, you almost certainly MUST have your firewall turned on. You can get attacked from the internet so FAST if you don't, it will make your head spin.
If you're roaming with a laptop, connecting at a hotspot, you absolutely need your firewall turned on.
To turn XP firewall on/off, go to control panel/firewall and you can then turn it on or off. You can also add permissions and exceptions there.
-Vince
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