Understanding Firewalls For Effective Network Traffic Management

A firewall is software or hardware that sits between two networks -- typically, between your LAN and the Internet -- and allows some sorts of network traffic through while preventing others. It works by rules that you set, which define the . . . A firewall is software or hardware that sits between two networks -- typically, between your LAN and the Internet -- and allows some sorts of network traffic through while preventing others. It works by rules that you set, which define the sort of security you want. Unless you know what sort of security you want and can cast it in rules that your firewall understands, your firewall will be useless or worse.

A firewall can be a stand-alone network appliance, part of another network device such as a router or bridge, or specialist software running on a dedicated PC. The latter route is popular among Linux fans and is worth investigating if you have those skills and can cost your time to make it worthwhile. If you're reading this, the chances are you don't want to take this approach.

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