Introduction to Firewall
A firewall is a line of defense and barrier between your computer network and the outside network such as internet. The basic purpose of the firewall is to protect your computer from the unauthorized access from the internet and from the other networks. It comes in either as a software or hardware and implemented on the gateway computer.
Every computer, which is connected to the internet should be configured a good firewall program to monitor the incoming and outgoing traffic and block the unauthorized access from the hackers and the intruders.
By default Windows XP Professional offers software firewall and if it is configured properly it can provide a good protection to your system from the internal and external threats. The hardware firewall is a dedicated device that includes the router and the firewall capabilities and it is control the network of a very large network.
Firewall typically uses different techniques of the network protections packet filtering, application gateway, circuit level gateway and the proxy server. In the packet filtering technique, the firewall appliance or software selectively control the data follow in and out of the network. Based on the predefined filtering rules, all the incoming and outgoing data packets are examined. Filtering rules are based on the different factors such as the source and destination IP addresses, type of the packet, protocol, error checking information, port number and others.
A proxy is a software program that runs on the intermediate or the gateway system to protect the internal clients from the outer network threats. There are different proxy software that offers the built-in firewall capabilities such as Winproxy, Wingatey, MSProxy and others.
Firewall Features
- Spam Filtering
- Antivirus
- URL Screening
- Centralized Management and reporting
- Spysite blocking
- Privacy Protection
- Email security
- Anti Phishing
- Network Protection
- VPN Support
- User Authentication
- Bandwidht Management
- Network Access Rules
- NAT
- Ports Scanning/Blocking
- Auto Detect
- Session Logging
- Intrusion Protection
- Automatic Configurations
Before purchasing any firewall solution for your network, you need to know your unique requirements and decide that which solution is best for you.