Going to be setting up my media server tomorrow...

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protex · Post by **protex** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 1:13 am

Hello there.

Tomorrow I am finally going to be using an old PC (Duron 1300) as a multimedia server. Thus I am purchasing a router. I current have a Shorewall firewall up via a How-To on these forums.

My question is, with the router (which I understand acts as a firewall) will I still need my Shorewall? And if so, can someone point me in the direction of a novice-understandable how-to on how to set one up when you have more than 1 PC.

Thanks in advance.

chrismortimore · Post by **chrismortimore** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 5:41 am

Depends on the router, but it should act as a "firewall" in a sense. The way routers tend to work is you need to tell it which ports you want to forward to which machines to make the port open to the internet, otherwise the port is closed and you're essentially safe from attacks.

For example:
If you have an NFS server running to share vids and music across your network, and you don't want it available to the outside world, the router will prevent outside users from accessing it.
If you have an apache server running you want the outside world to access, you'll need to tell the router to forward port 80 to the server machine, to allow internet users to access the server.
With these examples, a firewall would not be necessary, however you'd want security on the server box to stop attacks.

Now, there is something called a "DMZ" (de-militarised zone), which is an address the router forwards ALL ports to. In this instance, you'd want to use your firewall. Generally, you have to manually set this up, because not many people use them.

Unless your firewall offers a really fancy features that you really want, the router will probably be enough unless you run a DMZ. And most routers come with firewalls built in anyway.

Aurisor · Post by **Aurisor** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 1:37 pm

I would reccomend you buy a nice linksys router. The one I have acts as a switch, firewall, and NAT all in one. You connect your machines, plug in your cable modem (or dsl modem), forward a few ports, and forget about it...works great.

chrismortimore · Post by **chrismortimore** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 3:08 pm

I've had bad luck with linksys. Personally, I favour Belkin or Netgear, they have never done me wrong. And Belkin have life time warranties, which is nice

VPN-User · Post by **VPN-User** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 4:47 pm

Linksys is based on Cisco Systems technology which is just great. Netgear and Belkin are cheap hardware crap producers and are well known for that.

chrismortimore · Post by **chrismortimore** » Mon Aug 14, 2006 4:48 pm

VPN-User wrote:Linksys is based on Cisco Systems technology which is just great. Netgear and Belkin are cheap hardware crap producers and are well known for that.

Which makes it funnier that the only piece of network hardware that I've had break (it actually burnt out) was Linksys, and was a hell of a lot more expensive than the Belkin