Re: Networking over mains cables

Russell Hafter News wrote:
In article
<slrngie8uu.l3r.usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Ollie
Clark <usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Yes, it looks like the packet filter is what the previous
discussion has mainly been about. It looks like your
router works with NAT

I googled 'NAT' which put me through to the Wikipedia
article on Network address translation. Although apparently
written in English, it was only marginally more
comprehensible than the monthly newsletters I get from
Vodafone Czech Republic (I do not read Czech, apart from a
few words here and there).

It basically means that the computers on your network are hidden
behind the router so outside computers can't even try to make a
connection.

which means you don't really need to worry about incoming
connections anyway (a discussion for another time) so all
you need to worry about is outgoing connections.

It would be nice if you are correct.

I think I am. Happy to be corrected by someone but I have been
doing this for a while.

The only thing you're really vulnerable to is you getting a virus,
trojan or some other nefarious program through an email/webpage
etc. It would be able to connect to the internet as your router
is currently set up.

To stop that you'd need to play with the packet filter rules to
only allow traffic you know is legitimate and block everything
else. Even then, I'd imagine quite a lot of these programmes
use common ports anyway which you'd have to leave open.

You'd probably be better off installing a firewall such as
ZoneAlarm on your individual computers. Zone Alarm can allow
or block specific programmes from accessing the internet at
the individual computers rather than just a type of traffic
at the router.

Of course, if you've only got RISC OS machines then I'm pretty
sure there's no malware which accesses the internet anyway so
there's not much to worry about.

If you'd turned port forwarding on or turned NAT off then
you'd need to worry about incoming packets as well. As
you probably haven't, you don't need to.

I have not seen any reference to NAT on any of the router's
displays, so I really do not know. The windows machine is
switched off at present, so I cannot check.

I'd be very surprised if you weren't using NAT and I'd be very
surprised if port forwarding was on. They are both the
defaults as far as I can see.

It wouldn't be too bad but I don't think you /need/ to
play with it.

The other parts of your firewall are:

Intrusion detection: Detects and blocks outside computers
from flooding your network with traffic.

This appears to be off by default. What could happen if I
were to activate it?

Nothing much really. It blocks outside computers from flooding
your network at the router. As you've got NAT on, traffic
wouldn't get into your network anyway. I wouldn't worry about
it - all it will do is record if you have had an attack.

MAC filter rules: Every network device has a unique MAC
address. You can specify rules to allow or block single
or ranges of MAC addresses. You'd use this if you only
wanted to allow certain computers to access your
network. More useful on wireles networks really so that
you can restrict unknown computers from connecting.

That could explain why my Nokia 9300 can connect to many
open WiFi networks in hotels, but cannot actually do
anything (like get through to one of my POP3 mailboxes)
useful?

No. It would explain why your Nokia 9300 /couldn't/ connect
to my wireless network at all (I've set it up only to allow
my laptop and a few other devices). If you can connect but
not do anything useful, that's something else.

.

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