Exposing your PC directly to the Internet is like not locking your door when you leave home, and the end result is someone intentionally or unintentionally intruding into your room and swept gold and silver jewelry. How can we guarantee the safety of the system? Installing firewall software is the most commonly used measure, and often as a complementary means, the installation of hardware-based firewall is also a common measure.
And even if you are an experienced veteran, configuring firewalls is not an easy task. If you have ever abandoned the idea of installing a firewall, or whether the firewall has a comprehensive protection of the system, it does not matter, today we will resolve the mystery for you.
Opening the Merriam-Webster Dictionary (merriam-webster), "Firewall" originally meant: a wall used to block the spread of fire. In the area of information technology, firewalls are used to protect computers from harmful intrusions from the Internet. Unlike fires, the threat from the network does not just affect the computers that are nearby, and if someone uses your IP address and TCP or UDP ports, no matter how far away, your system will be hit.
Whenever you use a browser, E-mail, or download a file from an Internet site or remote server, the data is passed through one or more ports in the system. And those computer hackers, whether they spy on the system's gifted teens, wily spyware, or the Windows XP Messenger service pop up spam, have the same attack strategy--either by discovering an open port to access the system, or by tricking you into opening a port like this.
Firewalls can monitor thousands of ports-either dial-up or broadband-and it can block unauthorized access requests. Hardware-based firewalls are typically integrated into routers and gateway products, between PCs and cable or DSL modems. And the software firewall is running on top of the PC.
For hardware firewalls, they are better at protecting PC networks that are connected over broadband. More importantly, they not only have the same routing capabilities, they also act as a NAT (network address translation, net addresses translation) server that hides the IP addresses of computers in the local area network from foreign visitors.