Kind of off topic but does anyone know if you can disable the firewall on a router?

[milldakill]

I have the a comp usa router and I was wondering if i could turn the internal firewall off on it, it seems to cause more problems than it prevents.

[wmansir]

Your router may have a feature called De-Milterized Zone or DMZ. This allows you to place one computer "in front" of the firewall, so it won't block any ports or incoming connections going to that computer. It only works for one computer though.

I don't know about that router specificly, but on my D-link you just enter the IP address of the computer you want to place in the DMZ (on the advanced settings page I believe) and then enable it.

[milldakill]

Am i the only one sick of firewalls on routers or are theu usefull?

[wmansir]

They are kind of necessary if your putting more than one computer behind a router (using NAT to share the connection/IP address).

By default all incoming connections are refused because the router doesn't know what computer to route the connection to, by placing a computer in the DMZ you are basically saying: send all incoming connections to this computer by default. Which, in effect, places that computer outside the firewall. But that only works for one computer.

You could instead use a simple network switch, but then you would need an IP assigned to each of your computers. And your ISP will charge extra for that, if they offer extra IP addresses at all.

Edit: some spelling, a typo and a little grammer.

[Fantasma]

As a matter of fact, firewalls are very important, and I am not sick of them.

I have used firewalls since the first time I connected to the internet many years ago; it was an exciting way to learn to protect networks, servers and personal computers. Firewalls, if well configured, have the ability to protect your machine from crackers and DOS attacks (remember the Ping of Death?), with some experimentation, you could even cloak your machine while online.

Some routers come with a web client tool you can use to configure the firewall rules, while others require that you have certain knowledge of Unix/Linux to connect to them and enter manual commands to change the settings of the firewalls.

Consult the router's handbook, if you don't have it, you can do a search in goggle, be careful though, and you could be opening the door to the bad guys.

See you in the movies.

[BoF]

Originally posted by wmansir
You could instead use a simple network switch, but then you would need an IP assigned to each of your computers. And your ISP will charge extra for that, if they offer extra IP addresses at all.
if you use a proxy server, does your ISP know how many IP (computers) are used on your LAN?