Author: Albert Silver
Date: 11:13:12 02/27/04
Go up one level in this thread
On February 27, 2004 at 13:29:35, Russell Reagan wrote:
>On February 27, 2004 at 13:05:38, Albert Silver wrote:
>
>>>You don't have the cable from your cable modem plugged directly into your
>>>computer do you?
>>
>>No, it goes through the ceiling fan first.
>>
>> Albert
>>
>>P.S. Yes, of course I do.
>
>You could stop a lot of that stuff from ever getting to your computer by getting
>a router (one with a firewall and that supports NAT, Network Address
>Translation). We have a Linksys router here with 4-6 computers behind it. It
>cost around $80 I think, but it has already paid for itself (more on this
>below).
>
>Basically if your computer is connected directly to the cable modem, the whole
>world can "see" your computer, ping it, attack it, or whatever. The router does
>a few things for you.
>
>First, it has a built in firewall to block certain kinds of traffic (just like
>your software firewall). You can use the router's firewall in addition to your
>software firewall. That's what I do.
>
>Second, it does NAT, which means that no one can actually see your computer on
>the internet. Instead, they only see the router. This means no one can directly
>connect to your computer (unless you configure the router to allow it, which
>isn't difficult).
>
>Another thing it can do is reduce the number of IP addresses you pay for. We use
>Comcast, and they charge an extra fee (I think $5/month) for each additional IP
>address we use. So if we have 6 computers on the net here, that's $25 more per
>month. The router makes it look to our ISP as if we only have one computer on
>the net.
>
>The router could also speed up your connection some (in theory anyway), since
>your computer won't be getting bombarded with network traffic that isn't
>intended for it.
Huh! Thanks for the interesting info. I'm afraid it will not be on the top of my
list of computer buys since my next upgrades include some more basic items (CPU,
RAM, HD), but it will come close after.
Albert
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