Here's a few little tips for you. I had been running a W2k box as an internet gateway serving internet connection to the LAN and FTP to LAN and the internet. I turned off all the services I wasn't using and never ran anything on there apart from what I needed and updating every now and again. No firewall. I had no problems.
Now, I have a linux gateway, for power and flexibility.
In neither case did anyone need to run a separate firewall on their machines behind the gateway; noone can address a machine on the private LAN behind the gateway. All a firewall does is silently drop packets on ports you don't have services running, to make it appear there's no machine there. This can mean that if you get port scanned they might assume your computer does not exist - that's about the only advantage.
As for anti-virus software - just keep your security updates in place (whichever operating system) and don't open/execute stuff you're unsure about.
That's worked for us for the last 2 and a bit years.
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Date: 2003-02-27 01:50 am (UTC)Now, I have a linux gateway, for power and flexibility.
In neither case did anyone need to run a separate firewall on their machines behind the gateway; noone can address a machine on the private LAN behind the gateway. All a firewall does is silently drop packets on ports you don't have services running, to make it appear there's no machine there. This can mean that if you get port scanned they might assume your computer does not exist - that's about the only advantage.
As for anti-virus software - just keep your security updates in place (whichever operating system) and don't open/execute stuff you're unsure about.
That's worked for us for the last 2 and a bit years.