[Newbie alert!] Is the Linksys BEFSX41 hardware Firewall/router a "real" firewall?

Why do you want your computer to be able to make changes in the router?

Not entirely unfounded on my part. In more than 20 years of using Usenet I've never seen any reason to validate a publicly posted message in Usenet. Sure, they can be abuses of posts/nicknames, but I've yet to see a reason to use a key for typical usenet conversations. In this group and about 30 others I participate it, they don't actually benefit the readers as most of no clue about how to validate them. Most of the readers just figure that the message is valid when they see the hash posted - and they assume that it's real/valid.

On the flip side, I never assume anyone in Usenet is who/what they say they are and always take posts on their face value only.

If there were 100 people reading this thread, and I were to cut/past your last hash into messages I were to forge as if you posted them, I bet less than 2 would catch it via the key. It's more likely that they would catch it via posting host or via content type or some other means, if they even looked that far.

It's not that they hash doesn't actually validate the message, it's that so few readers will actually check, and most Usenet readers don't auto-validate messages using PK's, so, we're back to where it doesn't really matter if you use it or not - as most of anything posted to Usenet isn't going to be verified anyway.

Good salesman.

Nah, it's always good to learn why others are doing something that one sees no use for. I can see your reasons now.

In my case, I've posted under 4 nick-names since 84, and use the XNA since the last two, change the email address once the spam becomes too much (this is a throw-away account - sig below), and never post anything I would be afraid for anyone in the public to see, since this is public (not implying anything with that comment), and I assume that my posts are just a unconfirmed as the next persons.

I had to testify in court once about IRC groups and identity, it was something that I had used for years, but only in technical groups. I needed to determine how long it took to learn enough about the members of a friendly (read that as one of those groups where people share their lives) group to determine who they really were - As a member of one group I never identified anything personal about myself, but in less than 30 days I was able to identify the exact location/identity of more than 20 members. I sent each one a note explaining how they gave out information over a period of days, how they have no idea who's on the other end, and what security risks they run.... It was interesting to see the content in their conversations change from that point forward. So, I understand your concern.

It has Stateful Packet Inspection. Simply put, it verifies that there was an outgoing request for any incoming traffic. It also utilizes Network Address Translation, translating private to public ip adressing and vice versa. It however, is not a true firewall appliance, but is an affordable measure of security for the home user.

Chris L

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While we're on the subject, is it possible to have the BEFSR41 either always assign the same IP to a given MAC, or serve DNS IPs but not client IPs?

I used fixed IPs when I first got the Linksys, which made log analysis much easier, but had problems due to the ISP changing DNS servers regularly. I switched to DHCP, but now clients get different IPs if they've been powered down for a while.

I'll admit to not having spent much effort researching this, but if there's an easy solution...

TIA

Sunny

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Leythos wrote in news:XLA1e.1859$ snipped-for-privacy@fe1.columbus.rr.com:

.... snip ...

.... snip ... When you say "setup your network on ..." by "network" do you mean the local ip address of the router or the starting DHCP address?

Thanks,

Tom

Change client lease time from the 0 default with is 1 day to up to max of 65535 minutes

John

The router asks for the IP Address and mask, it defaults to 192.168.0.1 or

192.168.1.1 (depends on version), change it to something non-default, like 192.168.10.1.

Changing the default will automatically change the issued DHCP IP scope to

192.168.10.x. if you have it enabled.

Leythos wrote in news:mXI2e.999$ snipped-for-privacy@fe2.columbus.rr.com:

Thanks,

Tom

Not really.