D&C GLug - Home Page

[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next by date / thread => ]

Re: [LUG] Firewall

 

On Saturday 08 January 2005 6:26 pm, PL-J wrote:
Hi

I have just got a router. (Binatone ADSL 2100  Etherner Router). I am very
confused about a number of things! (The good news is it is working). 
However security first.  I use Fedora Core 2.

If I had a "gateway" computer I would turn off the firewall on all the
others.

This would be a separate machine running something like IpCop or Smoothwall - 
only this machine would have a direct access to your internet connection and 
everything else on your network would connect via that machine using a second 
network card and often a different subnet.

The router IS a gateway - it has it's own routing tables, firewall and acts as 
a gateway for all other machines to the internet connection to which it alone 
has complete access.


I think the router is my gateway

It is.

To use the router, any computer on your network must know to use the router as 
it's gateway to the internet. This is usually done with the route command:
# route add default gateway 192.168.0.7
or whatever IP you've given the router.

so I have turned on its firewall, and 
turned the firewall off on my two computers (probably cos I had all sorts
of problems with my LAN when it was on before).

Is this correct?

You don't need to turn off the internal firewalls but you can. If you don't 
need web servers, FTP, SSH, telnet or others, inside your home network, turn 
them off - that's far better than using a firewall internally.


-- 

Neil Williams
=============
http://www.dclug.org.uk/
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/isbnsearch/
http://www.williamsleesmill.me.uk/
http://www.biglumber.com/x/web?qs=0x8801094A28BCB3E3

Attachment: pgp00023.pgp
Description: PGP signature