Firewall

Network firewall

A firewall controls what type of requests can be sent from the internet to computers on the local network. Most home local networks have no computers that provide services to internet, so the firewall is usually configured to block all requests coming from the internet. Computers on the local network can send any request to the internet out through the firewall, but only replies to these requests will be allowed back through the firewall. This done because there may be services running on computers on the local network that the owner is unaware of, but that would allow access to the computer from anywhere on the internet if requests were sent to them and were accepted. Blocking all incoming requests prevents this.

There are some applications that need to accept requests from the internet in order to work - examples are:

• Running your own website on you own computer
• Running your own mail server on you own computer
• Playing games with other players on the internet

You will need to find what port the application uses and allow requests to this port through the firewall to a specific computer.

Sofware firewall

A software firewall performs the same function as the network firewall, but is implemeted as software running on a device e.g. a PC and only protects that single device.

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