Cable Router with inbuilt firewall?

[pompeyrodney]

I have a home network set up with about 10 pc's simultaneously connected and online. Rather than have to use a software firewall on each of them, I want to employ a firewall that only allows the connections I want it to. I am a 10 meg customer and ideally would like the router/firewall to be gigabit compatible. Thanks in advance.

[joe-1981]

Hi mate most routers will also function as a firewall complete with DMZ facilities. Depending on your budget and requirements you have hundreds of options. Idealy you would employ a dedicated firewall of which there are hundreds

Are there any specific requirements or budget constraints?

[pompeyrodney]

Hi Joe
I am using a Linksys BEFSR41 version 2.1 which as far as I am aware does not have a firewall built in, if you know better please let me know.
Cheers

[Aragorn]

All broadband routers have a basic NAT firewall - you only have one VM IP address to share, Network Address Translation allows you to share that address but only 'solicited' traffic should be allowed in by default (ie if I browse to a website, the webserver is allowed to send traffic to the PC that requested it).
As the router has only four ports, you have a switch (or two) somewhere on the home network - is that gigabit capable? If not, anything attached to that will only run at 100Mb.
I think routers without wireless are hard to find, but any N mode router should be Gb capable and will almost certainly have a more functional firewall (including DMZ and port forwarding).

[joe-1981]

HI mate i dont have any experience with your model but first of all 10 connections on a 4 port router seems a bit of a mismatch. I'd look for a more capable router along the lines of a Cisco 800 series routers http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/...380/index.html

budget depending.