Cable routers help foil hackers
Q: I have three computers on my home network, all connected to my cable modem router. Is it better to have a software firewall or is it better to get a router with a firewall built in?
A: If you are using a basic cable router like the one provided by your ISP or one that you have purchased for yourself, you are effectively running all your PCs on a private IP network. This means that all the devices connected to this router, whether wirelessly or wired, have IP addresses that are not routable to the internet.
Only the router has an internet routable IP address, and it handles all the traffic to and from the internet. It then translates that info to the computers connected to it and handles the routing of the data. This is known as network address translation or NAT.
Because the IP addresses are not routable to the internet a would-be hacker is less able to access your PC. All the hacker can access is the external interface on your router. Because the router has no files to steal and no services to hijack this effectively cuts off intruders that might try to access your network.
This is pretty effective overall for securing your home network. The other benefit is that you need not use system resources on your various PCs running firewall software the whole time your PC is up and running. This helps with the overall performance of your PC and cuts down on issues that might come up with file and print sharing, etc.
For each user the level of protection that they choose is dependent on a tradeoff between efficiency and security. You will have to decide how secure is secure enough.
For me, enabling the Windows firewall and maintaining good, up-to-date antivirus and anti-malware software is sufficient for keeping my home network safe and secure.
For more information on home network security please read the following article from the CERT Coordination Center at tinyurl.com/helplinecertsecurity.
There’s more to security than firewalls and you might find some useful information in the article.