Hi, Have managed to sort out my networking problems--everthing works fine as long as i disable the windows firewall and norton/bitprotecter firewalls on both machines.I believe my linksys ADSL gateway(wag54gs) works as a firewall, is this sufficeint or should i be finding a way to configure the software firewalls to allow networking?
You should only have one software firewall turned on any given system. Having more than one will cause problems. Additionally, you will need to open ports for any services you want to share with other computers.
hi, my router also says it has an intergrated firewall but my sotfware firewall keeps popping up, i've tried without a software firewall and nothing happens so i presume i'm better of with a software firewall installed (last available sygate)
I thought that routers incorporating firwalls can be set/set-up via a console of sort (WWW one?? ). If this is the case you would not need a software firewall on your computer. Just open/close the ports on the firewall 'in' the router.
well i also have forced windows fire firewall to be active (when i use XP, cos i don't know which ports need blocking, cos there's a hell of a lot of them, thank you Microsoft) can you tell me which port's need blocking and which port's should be open, sabashuali ?
You need to study TCP/IP! You should block all ports except the most important ones. This includes (but is not limited to) FTP : Ports 20,21 SMTP : Port 25 HTTP: Port 80 POP : 110 Do a Yahoo search for TCP/IP ports
A small tip - You should only have one firwall set-up on your system. So, if you have a firewall in your router, using a secondary firewall on the PC is asking for trouble. I would suggest you learn to operate the firewall you have in the router. Ports: A very abstract rule is - Out is OK, in is bad. The exception being file sharing where it is important to have data flowing in as much as out. There are more exceptions but I would not know about these as my knowledge is very basic and limited. Now, if you insist on using a secondary firwall in your PC, I would strongly recomend a firwall which you can actualy work with. The XP firewall is not a very good example of that. Any firewall will have an extensive guide which will help you set it up correctly. Regardless, I would strengthen mega's comments. Go forth and learn. That's a good boy.....
I agree Saba. This is how I'd set up a network. I'd recycle an old PC, install Linux on it and use it as a router. I'd install a firewall on it as well. -Plug the internet directly into this computer. -Buy a second network card and install it into this computer. -Buy a switch and connect it to the second network card. -Connect all of your workstations to the switch. -Set up DHCP on the computer Only one computer uses a firewall. All of the computers connect to the switch don't need a firewall and can freely share their files with other computers on that switch (if you wanted to set up a peer-to-peer).
thank you so much for the help, guess i've got some serious reading and learning to do, again thank you to everyone on HWF that has helped me
i dont suppose this could be done within 1 computer (possibly using VPN) with 2 network cards a switch because i could also connect my telephone adaptor (VoIP) into the switch as well or do i definatly need at least two computers
