<< does anyone know if the dlink router firewall can be easily _disabled_? can i do it on the fly or must i reboot something? thanks >>
I'm assuming when you say disabled that you mean no longer blocking ports. Go to my summary for the quick and dirty, explanation follows here. All config changes to the router require a reboot of the router, so its not on the fly.
By default, the Dlink does not act as a "FIREWALL" aka Packet filter. You are in fact protected, but only through obscurity behind the Dlink.
The issue is the Dlink acts as a gateway using Network Address Translation, so it takes the real IP that you get assigned from your ISP, and all other computers attached through it take an internal ip. This means without a blanket port forward of all ports to the computer you want the firewall to be disabled for, computers on the internet will not be able to directly communicate with the internal computer.
The Dlink however does have a option called the DMZ, which supposedly would disable all firewalling of the target computer. However, due to the way the manual describes this, I'm not sure if it automatically forwards all ports to that computer, or just disables any Packet filtering to that computer.
To summarize, assuming turning on DMZ does in fact port forward, then yes it is as easy as enabling the DMZ, and rebooting the dlink. If however, the DMZ setting does NOT port forward, you would need to go into the virtual servers tab and manually set the port forwards.
hth, if anyone sees any errors with my comments, PM me please, if you want more specifics of what I know from working with dlink gateways, PM me.
OP