What is a firewall and why is this important?

[solidstar]

Sorry for the question, but I really have little background in IT that's why I am asking. What exactly is a firewall and how does a firewall work and how/who can set it up? Thanks in advance!

 

[cabri]

Short version

Firewalls prevents unauthorized access for both inbound & outbound communication.
It can be software on your computer, or a combination of external h/W and Software.

Others will be along later for a more detailed description

 

[John Connor]

Read all about it! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firewall_%28computing%29

In routers you have SPI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stateful_firewall

I use Comodo Firewall. I do have a router, but what's stooping the outbound? The firewall offers other protections like ARP cache poisoning protection for my laptop.

 

[solidstar]

Thanks for your replies. I think I understand it better now. Anyway, the company where I work is having their firewalls updated. I don't really know what the company they hired did but our connections are faster now.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Firewalls control the inbound and outbound traffic between computers or computer networks, typically in business you have a firewall between your LAN (local area network) and the WAN (wide area network, AKA the internet), the configuration of the firewall typically stops anyone on the internet from accessing protected resources on your LAN.

Firewalls will sometimes come with QoS (quality of service) rules which allows admins to priorities some traffic over others and so this may result in some people seeing faster speeds or slower speeds depending on who you are and what you're doing. Firewalls are often rated for a certain number of users or connections depending on their speed so replacing firewalls which are too slow with faster ones can often speed up your internet.