Quwery about firewall software

[Bret Busby]

On 14/11/2015, Gene Heskett <gheskett at wdtv.com> wrote:


<snip>

> A common, $70 USD router with enough reflashable memory that you can
> reflash it to DD-WRT makes an ideal firewall. I have a Netgear
> WNA3500-something here, protecting my 5 machine home network.

Our modem/router incorporates a firewall, which I had enabled, but,
from many years ago, back, when I believe the 80486 was the latest
whizzbang new CPU, I have been using a firewall/gateway computer for
our LAN - it may have been from before DSL, when we were on dialup. We
had started with an IPchains or IPtables (I am not sure which of those
two, came first) firewall, that was provided to us by a friend in a
local Linux User Group, and then, when I found Firestarter, we
conerted to that. But then, firestarter ran out of support, but, our
old firwall/gateway computer has been idling away, providing us with
its level of protection, with all of the other protections that we
have had, including the modem/router inbvuilt firewall.

> It has
> just sat there and ran for several years now, drawing about 5% of the
> power an old wintel box drew for several years prior to it.  Its
> programmed to forward one port to this machine, which is how you can see
> the web page in my sig.
>
> When looking at routers, it must be reflashable, and must have 4 megs of
> flash, with 8 megs being even better.
>
> Network access for my home network machines is utterly transparent, but
> no one has come in to do any dirty work in a decade or more.  I'm
> probably foolish, but I haven't worried about the black hats in years.
>
>> -- <you are missing a space between the second dash and the \l here to
>  make that into a legit sig separator.

In this application, with the MTA (?) that I am using; the gmail thing
has its own signature file, and I have just checked, and, in that, the
line with the hyphens, is not present, so I have inserted a blank line
into my signature stored in gmail, to see what effect that has. It
would not take effect in this message, but, in the next message that I
send, after this message.

-- 
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia

..............

"So once you do know what the question actually is,
 you'll know what the answer means."
- Deep Thought,
 Chapter 28 of Book 1 of
 "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
 A Trilogy In Four Parts",
 written by Douglas Adams,
 published by Pan Books, 1992

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