Our system is protected at the Internet connection by a Linksys hardware router that only allows incoming data on ports that I have specifically set up. If you are not running a Web or e-mail server from your connection, you will not have to worry about opening ports up for this purpose. For the most part you will not need to have any ports open to the outside world unless you are trying to access your system from somewhere else. If you do not have a firewall, hardware or software, your computers that are connected to a broadband connection are vulnerable to attacks on any one of the 65535 ports available on your computer.

There are computers that the hackers have set up to scan the Internet looking for unprotected systems. When one of these systems is found, it will be infected with a Trojan that will usually allow the hacker to control some of the things that your computer is able to do. Some of the Trojans will also begin searching for other unprotected system to infect. When the time is right the hacker will send a signal to all of the computers under his control. The signal could be to deny service to a particular Web site by requesting enormous amounts of data from that site. With a couple of hundred systems asking for the same data from the same site, this will effectively close the site to the rest of us because the Web site will not be able to keep up with the requests. This is called a Denial of Service attack. Service to a site is denied by the hacker by overloading the Web server with erroneous requests.

If you leave your system unprotected there is a good chance that it is going to become infected with this type of Trojan and possible with many others that could be much worse. Most of the viruses and Trojans have a way to spread themselves to other machines. The same way your machine will get infected is the same way that your machine will infect others. It is a domino effect that will only stop when all of the systems on the Internet are protected and I do not see that happening anytime soon.

So what do you need to do to protect yourself from the wilds of the Internet? If you have more than one computer at the house that you would like to connect to your broadband connection, I would suggest a 4 port router. There is also a wireless 4 port version available. This will allow you to network your computers together and share files and printers with the other users as well as share the broadband connection. If you have more than four computers there are routers with more ports or you could add a switch to one of the existing ports to expand. The Linksys router will handle up to 256 users. It acts like a DHCP server to hand out IP addresses to the computers on the internal network as well as the directions for where to go to get to the Internet. Setting up a home network would be a matter of having the wires run and then plugging in the computers for cable access. DSL requires that you have a user name and password so there are a few other steps that must be taken to get up and running but it is still very easy.

Since the router is the only device that is actually connected to the Internet, it is virtually impossible for the hackers to get to your machines that are connected to the private internal network. The router is a hardware device and not a computer so there is nothing to hack in to. You have the option to open ports on the router to allow access into your network if you want to run a Web or e-mail server or any other type of application on your systems that needs access from the outside. You need to know what you are doing before you open up any ports to the outside world.

If you only have the one computer connected and you do not want to go to the expense of a hardware router at this time I would strongly suggest that you install some type of software firewall. The standard version of ZoneAlarm is free and is all that you will need to protect yourself. You will need to answer questions each time a program tries to access the Internet. You will need to know what the program is that needs access or find out what it is before allowing access. If you choose, ZoneAlarm will continue to allow access to program that you choose so that you will not need to answer the same question for Internet Explorer or Outlook every time you get on. As with a hardware firewall, all access from the outside in is stopped unless you specifically allow it.

With all the hackers that are out there it doesn’t make sense to get on a broadband connect without some sort of protection. Some form of wall between you and Internet is necessary to keep your system running. If you choose not the run a firewall you will be stopping not only your system over time but countless other systems as your machine gets infested with Trojans and viruses. It is really a simple process and something that you cannot afford not to do for the sake of not only your systems but the many other unprotected systems.