Router

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Paul

Hi everyone,

General question that I hope I'm posting in the right place. About two
weeks ago I got a laptop computer from work and bought a router so that the
laptop and my personal PC can share my home high speed internet connection.
(cable modem). Ever since I installed the router, the number of alerts I
get from my Norton Personal Firewall has dropped to almost zero. I used to
get numberous alerts per day about intrusion attempts. Maybe this is a dumb
question, but does the router do anything or act like an external firewall
to stop attacks and probing from getting to my PC? Thanks. If it does,
thats great, I just didn't know that a router did that.
 
Paul said:
Hi everyone,

General question that I hope I'm posting in the right place. About two
weeks ago I got a laptop computer from work and bought a router so that the
laptop and my personal PC can share my home high speed internet connection.
(cable modem). Ever since I installed the router, the number of alerts I
get from my Norton Personal Firewall has dropped to almost zero. I used to
get numberous alerts per day about intrusion attempts. Maybe this is a dumb
question, but does the router do anything or act like an external firewall
to stop attacks and probing from getting to my PC? Thanks. If it does,
thats great, I just didn't know that a router did that.
Click to expand...

Before the PC had the internet IP address so all the port scans arrived
there now they arrive at the router as it has the Internet IP and you share
that single IP through a technology known as Network Address Translation or
NAT.
 
Routers can act as firewalls or as a kind security system
that is a bit less then a firewall that is called "Access
Lists" but I belive that your router being a simple
internet router doesn't have either one (but it might, you
should check). what probably did help was the fact that
now the router has the real IP not like before when your
PC had it. now your PC and the laptop both are in a LAN
and both have IP Address that are fake which they get from
the router, and are not real internet address. Although it
is better than nothing this does NOT provide the
protection of a firewall or another security device, this
can be hacked into, and it is not too difficult either.
 
-----Original Message-----
Hi everyone,

General question that I hope I'm posting in the right place. About two
weeks ago I got a laptop computer from work and bought a router so that the
laptop and my personal PC can share my home high speed internet connection.
(cable modem). Ever since I installed the router, the number of alerts I
get from my Norton Personal Firewall has dropped to almost zero. I used to
get numberous alerts per day about intrusion attempts. Maybe this is a dumb
question, but does the router do anything or act like an external firewall
to stop attacks and probing from getting to my PC? Thanks. If it does,
thats great, I just didn't know that a router did that.

--
Paul
Cleveland, Ohio


.
Norton is a software firewall where the router is a
Click to expand...
hardware firewall which blocks intrusions before they get
to your computer. Norton actually lets the intruder get
to the computer, so your router is all that is necessary.
 
The router probably uses NAT, which does a good job, but you still need the
Norton, particularly for viruses/worms/etc attached to emails.
 
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