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thinking of getting a Cable Router, what is meant by "Firewall" feature.

J

jaytone

Senior member
Hi
I currently running a Cable modem to my NIC. I would like to get a SMC Barricade Router so that I can connect all three of my computers to share the Cable modem
I am a newbie at this and when I read that all computers will be behind a "Firewall" when using the Router, I dont know what that means or how it affect using the internet.
All three computers will be accessing the following:

1. Normal web sites
2. Napster
3. AOL instant messenger
4. Online Gaming such as Unreal Tournament.
5. Email, etc
6. Downloading files from various sites.

Right now, with the cable modem connected to my computer, I have never had a problem and assume I am not behind a firewall.
So, if I connect all three to the Router, will I encounter any problems accessing the above sites ? If not, are there any things I wont be able to do on the internet that I can now do as a single user ?
Thanks.
 
The firewall protection afforded by a router comes in the form of Network Address Translation (NAT). What it does is take your external WAN IP address and translate it to your internal LAN IP addresses. This makes it difficult for the outside world to access your shares.

I'm not familiar with that router, but if it does DHCP, it'll be pretty easy to set up and should work fine for what you want to do.

Russ, NCNE
 
According to the description, it comes with a DHCP whatever that means. Do you know if there is a way to disable the Firewall on all three ?
 
If you disable NAT, you would need to have three external IP addresses, one for each computer. Why would you want to do that?

Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) will provide an IP address and network settings to each of your PCs without the headache of manually configuring them. They will simply grab the information at bootup from the router, which acts as the DHCP server.

Russ, NCNE
 
jaytone:

Trust me, you would not want to disable the firewall feature, unless u want everyone on the internet to access your PC and do whatever they want to it... esp with all these kids on the net with too much time on their hands...

By the way, if you configure the router properly (ie. forward ports) you should not have a single problem with any of the stuff you listed in your first post of this thread...
 
Ok Russ
I have Netgear RT314. Cannot use Napster correctly due to firewall on router. Port number for Napster is 6699. I know this problem can be fixed
easily, but I don't know how. If you or anybody else out there can help this poor newbie it would be appreciated.
I used telnet to get into what I thought was the correct menu item but I must be doing something wrong. After posting port number and IP address of computer into the menu I would test Napster and was still not able to let anyone upload anything from me. All requests would eventually time-out. I assume because of the firewall and the proper port forwarding in menu item 15 was not done correctly by myself. If I went back into router all postings(6699 and IP address) did not appear on the menu.
Please help if you can.
ps. my new home lan works great so does the router
 
british1,

If the Netgear is anything like the Linksys, port forwarding probably only works if the internal IP to which you are forwarding is static. In other words, not assigned by DHCP. You can have both on the network; not all systems need to be DHCP.

Have you tried manually configuring on the target PC?

Russ, NCNE
 
Russ, if you are still out there !!
I'm not sure what you mean about DCHP.
Using winipcfg, it sez IP address for target PC is 192.168.01.
This is the address suggested by just about everything I read before
setting up the Lan. I manually assigned this number somewhere before the
router install. Second PC address is 192.168.03.
I am positive the router software will let me do what is needed, but I'm
not sure of where, how or exact keystrokes.
If anyone else has info let me know.
I'll be looking up DCHP to see if that helps.
Thanx for your commemts Russ.
Next time I mite be asking for pricing on a new box.

briths1
 


<< Using winipcfg, it sez IP address for target PC is 192.168.01 >>



I assume you meant to have another dot in the address: 192.168.0.1?

Do you know what the address of the router itself is? This would serve as the gateway address and all others would spring from it. For example, here's the setup from my Linksys:

Router: 192.168.1.1 (gateway)
Subnet mask: 255.255.255.0

So, the first PC on my network starts with 192.168.1.2, and all the PC's have a gateway address of 192.168.1.1 and a mask of 255.255.255.0 for the INTERNAL network. They also have both the primary DNS and secondary DNS servers entered, that are assigned by my ISP.

Now, in my case, most of these are done through DHCP, so the settings are assigned dynamically by the router when the machine is booted up. But, I have some that I have statically assigned the network settings to because I needed fixed IP addresses for server purposes.

My backup server is one of these and I have one of my WAN (external IP) addressess port-forwarded to it for port 80 (html). Thus, it looks like this:

The external IP (WAN)of 207.108.218.137:80 is forwarded to the internal IP (LAN) of 192.168.1.4. On this machine, as is the case with all of them, the gateway and subnet masks, as well as the DNS servers, match the settings in the router.

Now, I have never used the Netgear, so I'm not familiar specifically with its interface, but one thing you should check is to make sure that all network entries match between the target PC and the router.

Russ, NCNE
 
Hi Russ
Glad to see you out there.
You first line said it all.
Rechecked winipcfg. Not enough ...
Reread pdf on-line about router(thanks for the push).
Got the correct IP address(I wrote it down this time).
Telneted back into software on router and bingo, all is well.
Now I have a hole in the hardware firewall, but I feel better about
sharing my mp3s.
If I can get this router to work anybody can. If you ever need a new one
I would highly recommend it(Netgear RT314)
Hope you learn some geeky good stuff from that networking book you bought.

thanx british1
 
<<I have Netgear RT314. Cannot use Napster correctly due to firewall on router.>>Text

I just read up on that very same problem over at 8wire.com
Try those guys, they seem to know their s**t over there on anything networking. Good luck.

Tips

 
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