Increase your internet security with a hardware firewall. Simon Edwards shows you how to get started in this step by step guide.
The internet has become a battleground, with viruses, worms and hackers ready to pounce on unprotected PCs. It's become virtual computer suicide to dial-up a Windows XP computer to the internet without a firewall. Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP 2) has gone some way to address the main security issues, but there are still risks. Personal firewalls are a good way to safeguard individual PCs, but standalone firewalls are the ultimate answer to the threats.
With the free SmoothWall firewall (www.smoothwall.org), you can turn an old PC into a powerful firewall and intrusion detection system, which is just what you need to stop today's threats turning into tomorrow's nightmare. In this article, we'll walk you through installing the software on a spare PC, and show you how to keep track of the traffic coming into and leaving your network. All you'll need is a copy of SmoothWall and a Pentium PC with an IDE hard disk, and at least one network card. SmoothWall works with USB ADSL modems and ISDN adaptors. You can also add extra network cards to use your firewall with Ethernet ADSL and cable routers, and create a safe zone to host servers.
What is a standalone firewall?
A standalone firewall protects your network from traffic that shouldn't be allowed in. This includes network worms and attempts by hackers to log into your internal systems. Since they don't have to do a lot of processing, and mostly just apply simple rules to incoming traffic, firewalls don't need to be powered by fast processors. A basic Pentium MMX PC is more than adequate to secure a small network with a dozen internet users. Combine an old, dusty PC with free firewall software such as SmoothWall or IPCop (www.ipcop.org), and you can build a serious security system for free.
If you want something that looks nicer, or sounds quieter, you could build a mini-ITX firewall. The above firewalls will run on systems using any x86 processors, including Intel's Pentiums and Celerons; AMD's Athlons and Durons; and VIA's C3 chips. Visit www.mini-itx.com for some interesting looking cases, motherboards and other components.