Quoted: as far as a fire wall goes, i have a linksys etherfast cable/dsl router hooked up to the output of my toshiba cable modem. is the router also a firewall???? i was told it was but im not for sure. i will buy the norton anti this afternoon.
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Yeah, the etherfast acts as a NAT firewall. Now that won't keep viruses out, it will just keep people from getting in who shouldn't get in, and hopefully keep some things from going out that shouldn't go out. It won't stop you from executing a virus and infecting yourself.
The thing about NAT firewall is that it is kind of using sleight of hand to protect you, hiding your real address from the outside world. POTENTIALLY someone could figure it out, but the odds are low and it's pretty unimportant a factor unless you're running some pretty important stuff.
For the best in firewalls, look for ones that include "stateful packet inspection." That means that the firewall looks at each incoming and outgoing packet and says, "should you be coming/going through here?"
For a list of awesome firewall technology, I'd reccomend heading to:
www.icsalabs.com/html/communities/firewalls/certification/rxvendors/index.shtmlThe ICSA certified firewall solutions are pretty tough, and some aren't too terribly expensive (especially the Sonicwall SOHO)
That being said, I'm sitting behind an etherfast as I speak, as I understand they work well enough... and anything that I really care about keeping secret is 1024 bit PGP encrypted.
Viper Out