|
Routers and Personal Firewalls
Uusing a router is essential to share and secure your Internet
connection, and a personal firewall is a great security addition -
if you can manage it.
Router
In the content of this
article, a router is a small piece of hardware that connects your pc
or network to the Internet.
Although not required to access
the Internet, we highly recommend a router because they are
inexpensive, they can usually be reused if you change Internet
providers, and they make it easy to securely share your Internet
connection with multiple computers.
Some routers have
wireless built in, so if you have a laptop that has integrated
wireless, you can access the Internet anywhere as long as you are
within range of your router.
To see what router we recommend,
visit the router section of our recommended hardware page.
Personal Firewall
A personal firewall is a piece of software
that runs on your computer. The purpose of a personal firewall is to
monitor and restrict what leaves your computer as well as prevent
anything unauthorized from entering your computer.
For a
personal firewall to truly be effective, it must be managed and
configured. For example, you must tell your firewall to allow your
email program or web browser to access the Internet. However, if you
execute some malicious software, you must be able to recognize that
it should not be able to access the Internet.
If you use a
router to connect to the Internet, keep your Windows Updates current
and use antivirus software, a personal firewall may be overkill for
most computer novices. This is especially true if you are not
willing to manage the firewall and answer all of its prompts.
However, if you would like to try a personal firewall, we
recommend the free version of Zone Alarm. You can download a copy
from Check Point (formerly Zone Labs).
They make it somewhat
tricky to download the free version; make sure you are simply
downloading Zone Alarm (not the suite or Pro version.)
|
