ADSL modems and routers

[The PIT]

Now is this a good model?? At present I've just got the DG814 which just does NAT. I don't want a dedicated PC as I haven't the room nad neither wish to have the extra cables around.
Wireless would be useful for when I have to leave my room for guests.

[bibble]

http://www.adslguide.org.uk/hardware...sar_715pvw.asp try this one. I am looking at the non wireless version personally.

[The PIT]

Looks interesting as it has at least default firewall settings otherwise it's going to be a long time working which ports you need open and which you need closed.

[The PIT]

What ports do you need open for mail ftp and web browsing. No messaging for Kazaa rubbish.
Ftp is port 21
Http is port 80 but there going to be others out of the thousands.

[bibble]

as far as I know its a whole bunch but I was going to read the manual when i got it. You can download the manual from the solwise site - networking was never my strong point but i need to get the 5 computers in the house up and running netwise

[Taz]

The only time you need to open ports on a broadband router would be if your running local servers you want people outside to access or for some P2P apps. For normal use i.e. web browsing, email, FTP, etc it will work out of the box.

Personally I'd stick to products made by the well known manufacturers i.e. Linksys, Netgeat, D-Link, SMC. You should get decent support that way and the company is less likely to go out of business before the warranties up

[bibble]

taz - what would you recommend? I am looking for something about the same price with switched 4 port hub, adsl, telnet/serial/web config, firewall etc

[Taz]

The D-Link DSL-504 isn't bad, you can get one for around £85.00

http://www.dlink.co.uk/310_311.htm

[The PIT]

Looking at the manual for the Netgear DG834M it seems that all ports are open by default which isn't want you want.

[Taz]

Originally posted by The PIT
Looking at the manual for the Netgear DG834M it seems that all ports are open by default which isn't want you want.

That's not entirely the case, it uses NAT, like all other gateway routers, and this acts like a firewall. As your PC will be on a private IP i.e. 192.168.0.100, it will not be directly accesible from the outside world. If you want a specific port to go to that PC then you would need to setup forwarding on the router. Forwarding works on a port by port basis and is limited to a single PC i.e. if you run a webserver you could forward port 80 to say 192.168.0.100 but you couldn't run another webserver on the same port. On top of NAT filtering some routers have IP filters as well, it's probably these they are referring to. NAT filtering is sufficient for most things, but it is limited to blocking only inbound traffic.

[The PIT]

Well I won't be using any servers. One of two things slip past my netgear DG814 which then get picked up by my software firewalls. Very rare but too be honest I'd rather filter them out at the router.