Question about hardware firewall... (1 Viewer)

[Rob Gillespie]

There is absolutely no reason why Real need to know what clips I'm playing on their (crappy) software. License agreement or not, they aint gonna get to know.

A software firewall such as ZoneAlarm checks outgoing traffic and can trap trojans which anti-virus apps may not pick up and my router certainly wont stop. The software firewall also protects against incoming problems from other 'puters on the LAN, whereas the hardware one only stops stuff coming in from the rest of the world.

Sorry, but this is getting silly. There's no real reasons why you shouldn't run a software FW in addition to a hardware based one. It does no harm and takes up so few resources that it's barely measurable. If you don't choose to run one - fine, but this 'argument' is beyond pointless now.

 

[John_Berger]

this 'argument' is beyond pointless now.

Or at least to the point where either side isn't going to listen anyway.

 

[Jason Merrick]

Since you all seem to be so knowledgeable about Firewalls, can someone please answer my question in between firing back and forth at each other?

What are some good settings for my D-Link router's hardware firewall?

 

[Chris Hovanic]

sure Jason

First check out D-link support page you can download the manual from their site there.

First thing you will want to do is change the password of the unit.

next you will want to set up how it gets its IP address from you ISP. This is the IP address for the WAN. Most of the time you will just use "obtain IP automatically"

if your PC(s) is/are set to obtain IP automatically then you will want to enable the routers DHCP server. this will hand out IP addresses to any computer that connects to your network. Normally they are 192.168.1.xxx This is referred to your internal network or LAN.

Wireless... if you are using it you should
1. Change ti SSID to something other than the default.
2. Enable WEP for more security.
3. the channel is used to help reduce interference with portable phones ect.

Check out the manual and it may explain things a little better.

 

[Jason Merrick]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for going into such detail on setting up the D-Link. I have already set it up and it is running fine, my question is actually related specifically to the firewall portion of the D-Link, which is not addressed in the manual. I don't know what "rules" to put into it to help secure my system.

Thanks again for attempting to help me though!