I'd confirm a lot of what Tolomir already said.
Windows Firewall tends to drop packets rather than reject. Basically the same thing, but it pretty ignores the packet when it drops it (same thing you wish you could do when you hear coworkers whining).
Software firewalls are generally host based. That is, they're intended for one machine. However, there are ways to have one machine protect a whole network, such as configuring one as a router (ICS is pretty much a low-end easy version of this). Firewalls integrated into routers are kinda similar... except the router is where the point of failure is. Hardware firewalls will actually protect at all costs, but don't do the routing work that a router would.
As long as the configuration on the Linksys is good, then you'll be fairly safe (assuming you didn't do a DMZ or things like that)
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by: TolomirPosted on 2006-02-06 at 07:02:45ID: 15883108
Alright, here is my home setup:
DSL modem with router, WLAN connection to my computers. On my main computer ZA pro installed / nod32 Antivirus.
In zonealarm you must define a local network, within that network ip range (you set to trusted) filesharing is possible.
Appearently you activated ICS to allow ip forwarding to/from the internet to/from your other computers. Filesharing / Remote Desktop is a different thing.
So, with your setup right now everything is fine. Of cause the internal windows firewall just drops those incoming request, without giving a notice about that as ZA does....
NAT is natwork address translation: This means you got your very own private 192.168.x.x network (I guess you are using DHCP?) so any packets from any computer within your network, has a 192.168.x.y IP number. When you send a packets to the internet your router modifies it with his IP as origin and keeps a tableentry about this translation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wi
Any incoming packet doesn't know about your private network, they "see" the router and "think" this is the endpoint. So without any open port e.g. you have established for filesharing, an uninvited packet is dropped. This provies some safety, because your router cannot be hacked like a plain unpached windows computer could be because he doesn't provide any services like filesharing / remote desktop / ftp by himself.
The ZA software firewall, blocks those attempts from the outside too, but it can be easier attacked itself, because ZA is some standard, a hacker could deal with,there ware ways to find out if ZA is up and running... But a hacker cannot know which hardware router you are using, because there are too many out there, with all different features and/or different flaws (nothing is perfect).
BUT a hardware router/firewall solution doesn't block outgoing traffic by default, here can ZA come into play. You can define that e.g. word.exe cannot connect to the internet (on the application level) http://en.wikipedia.org/wi
Tolomir