Warm deal ... firewall

[RickyBaby]

Bought a 2Wire HomePortal firewall at Office Depot this weekend. Acts as a firewall and you share cable/dsl modems among mutliple computers behind the firewall. Has connections for ethernet, usb, and HPNA 2.0. All in all a pretty cool little box to replace my linux firewall.

Oh yea, the deal. This HomePortal 100 device was $300 awhile back but they recently dropped the price to $200. Office Depot has a mail in rebate for $100. So $200-$100MIR=$100. Not bad for a firewall with all the basic connection types.

RB

 

[EliteForces]

what the difference between that and the ROUTER.

 

[boggsie]

<< what the difference between that and the ROUTER. >>



I believe that a switch/router is an upgrade from a hun in that the switch/router sends traffic to the specific port that requested it, whereas a hub broadcasts all traffic to each and every other node on that hub. Neither of these, unless specifically stated, include firewall technologies. You can have a switch, router or hub without a firewall. However, many of the home routers (Linksys, SMC, 3COM) also include built-in firewalls.

 

[Perplexer]

<< You can have a switch, router or hub without a firewall. However, many of the home routers (Linksys, SMC, 3COM) also include built-in firewalls. >>



The cheap broadband routers like the Linksys, SMC, 3COM, Netgear use NAT, which is adequate for most users as a "firewall," although they do not perform as a firewall. They do block/restrict inbound traffic, but let all outbound traffic through. A true firewall monitors both inbound and outbound traffic. I think the 2wire product falls into that category.

The HPNA connector is a nice feature, also.

Bump for a great deal. I'd get one myself, but I'm moving next week to an area with no broadband access available. My SMC router will have to do.

 

[boggsie]

Thanks for the clarification. My SMC does permit me to block outgoing traffic on particular ports, which is neat. I would admit, that I'm not sure exactly how I would use that particular feature. I guess if all that you use is http, ftp & mail, you could block outgoing traffic to ports other than these three. I wonder how that would hinder passive ftp? At this point, I am over my head. As you can see, I know just about enough to be dangerous. Thanks for the clarification.

btw ... this deal is a repost.

 

[RDMustang1]

linkified

 

[wlj]

Blocking all unnecessary outbound traffic is generally a good idea. For normal "surfing" behavior -- including the use of passive FTP -- blocking unnecessary outbound traffic won't impact you. Active FTP, however, will break.

Even if you aren't into restricting outbound traffic, it's a good idea to block the outbound Windows networking ports (endpoint mapper [TCP/135, UDP/135], NetBIOS name service [TCP/137, UDP/137], NetBIOS datagram service [UDP/138], NetBIOS session service [TCP/139], and Windows 2000 session service [TCP/445]). This will prevent accidental or malicious "leakage" of windows networking information onto the Internet.

 

[NetworkDad]

A hub is simply a multiport repeater. It takes a signal and retransmits it cleanly.
A switch is a multiport bridge. It can filter traffic and separate broadcast domains based upon the MAC address only. It does not make decisions based upon the IP traffic.

 

[poppagene]

repost