Those of you with routers...

[stan03]

my netgear router is also a firewall... do i have to configure this or anything? or is the firewall automatically enabled.... and your are speaking to a n00b here, this is my first network i have set up.

[The_Jizzler]

good question. i also have a netgear, mr814, and really dont know much about it. the documentation that comes with it is lame. and it doesnt seem to have many options. which leads me to believe alot of it is done auto, or i understand less than i think i do (more likely).so to your answer your question, i have no idea, but im in the same boat as you are.

[drshivas]

Run this with your router up:

EDIT: I should introduce this link. It is a tool made by Steve Gibson. He's been on TechTV and is a leading freelance expert in PC security. I've used this tool for the past 4 years setting up networks and locking people's PCs down for them.

https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2

Then run the "ShieldsUP!! Services" on the following page to scan your ports, file sharing, etc.

Your router should be blocking most of the common holes by default.

If you didn't have a router, you'd have to do a lot of work to lockdown your PC.

[bchur83]

More or less, the firewall feature is NAT. Basically no one computer on your network is directly connected to the internet. You have one IP address that your ISP gives you, but that gets assigned to your router. The computers on your network have IP addresses that are private, so they can't be seen on the internet. The router acts like a translator between you and the internet and therefore puts you behind a firewall. I hope you can understand that.

[Fightingpiper]

Just make sure you create a password for the router login...especially if its wireless. I finally bought a USB wireless card so I could see if my Hotspot was working at my house and my neighbor is running wirless. I connected to his oneday and sure enough I could get into his router because he didn't password protect (kept it at default) nor did he have any wireless secruity set. ........havnt run into him yet to tell him he needs to secure his network......

I have also been surfing and and have ran into router login pages and have seen that some peeps havn't set a password for those routers serving stuff to the web......

[TheCrow]

Originally posted by bchur83
More or less, the firewall feature is NAT. Basically no one computer on your network is directly connected to the internet. You have one IP address that your ISP gives you, but that gets assigned to your router. The computers on your network have IP addresses that are private, so they can't be seen on the internet. The router acts like a translator between you and the internet and therefore puts you behind a firewall. I hope you can understand that.

Sorry to disagree, but NAT is not the same as Firewall.

You could say that NAT by itself is security measure, but it has nothing to do with a firewall.