Firewalls; those wonderful pieces of technology that make it safer for you to use your computer without the nagging fear that someone is hacking you. Normally firewalls are a good idea, but in the wrong hands, they can become little more than an impediment to connectivity and hindrance to several software applications.

Designed to stop the connections between the internet and certain ports on your computer, firewalls really to help limit the amount of information that can be sent to and from a machine. Standard ports such as 80, 8080, 21, and 137 are all that you need open to be able to surf the web. Other ports, those lying between 1024 and 65535, are what various software programs use to connect to the internet and add dynamic content to your application. When these ports are blocked, say by the RU firewall, it can become a hassle to redirect programs to use open ports, or to disable a program's web connection completely. Under the guise of "protecting students from harmful internet resources", Radford University has kindly blocked most ports under 1024. While this doesn't interfear with most programs, it can still cause a mess with some.

Users of AIM and ICQ are probably the most common sources of firewall programs. When trying to connect directly to anyone else, both machines must have the proper open ports. If you tried to connect to another machine behind a firewall that didn't allow these ports, ICQ and AIM will refuse the connection. This is how Radford blocked services like Napster, as well as some variants like Gnutella and CuteMX. The latter two of these allow the users to change the local port, so it's all good.

Firewalls also hamper online gaming. While 9 out of 10 games will run just fine through firewalls, some simply do not. They are programmed in such a way that when they run into a closed port, they simply give up and tell you that you can't connect, instead of trying another, potentially open port. All in all firewalls are a good idea, and Radford's is less restrictive than most other universities. If you ever set up a home network with 3 or more computers, it is actually a good idea to setup a firewall, to stop younger siblings and inexperienced parents from getting into trouble. If, on the other hand, you are just running one computer connected to the internet, stay away from firewalls. They are the bane of all that is "Internet goodness."

Name: The Subterreanean
Comments:
Firewall? Sounds like something straight out of a RPG

Name: boo
Comments:
hello? is anybody out there