Just Turned Off Firewall ! Should I ?

paul11974 · 03-09-2007, 15:48

The net has been really slow for a day now so i have gone into the settings on my router and disabled the firewall. I still have pc guard on my pc should i go back and enable my firewall inside the router ?

**Chris** · 03-09-2007, 15:52

Is PC Guard a firewall? I dunno, I'm a Mac user.

One thing I do know is, you must have a firewall running on your machine or else it is in danger of getting taken over. If PC Guard is not a firewall, switch the router firewall back on immediately.

In fact, even if PC Guard is a firewall, you should have the router firewall on. Hardware firewalls are better.

paul11974 · 03-09-2007, 15:53

Yeah but is slowing my browsing down to a snails pace

Raistlin · 03-09-2007, 15:56

I seriously doubt that the slow browsing you are experiencing is solely down to your router's firewall. If it is then that firewall is misconfigured.

My Internet connection on this machine is running through 2 routers (both firewalled) and a software firewall on the machine itself. I'm not getting any problems with speeds (other than the fact that the WoW downloads I'm getting at the moment are eating my bandwidth alive

).

Jon T · 03-09-2007, 15:59

A router performs firewall like duties anyway, that's one of the added bonuses of NAT(network address translation), in that your PC is not visible from the internet. And the only things that can come from the outside are either a) applications/ports you have forwarded to you PC, or b) applications/ports your PC has instigated communication on.

The firewall on/off feature probably enables things like SPI(statefull packet inspection), and may also be able to detect and prevent SYN/DDOS attacks etc.

It's up to you in the end, however, if the router firewall is slowing internet access down then I would try and narrow it down to more than just toggleing the thing either on or off as it sounds more like a misconfiguation to me.. Does it have more configuration options, if so, try switching these on or off first.

paul11974 · 03-09-2007, 16:47

have been using the router and the net with no problems for over a year but today the only thing that will speed my browsing up is to turn off the routers firewall

Raistlin · 03-09-2007, 16:49

Then I'm guessing that either:

a) you've changed something on you computer, perhaps installed/upgraded a piece of software, or changed the way that it's working, or that
b) something has changed on your computer without you knowing, possibly spyware/malware, or something's updated/upgraded itself.

The third possibility is that your router is starting to fail, and the odd firewall related symptoms are the first signs of that - I would suggest it would be unusual for this to manifest itself in this way though.

**Paul** · 03-09-2007, 17:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by paul11974

Yeah but is slowing my browsing down to a snails pace

Are you saying your speed returned to normal after you disabled the firewall ?

If so, re-enable it and see if you slow down again, if you do, power the router off, wait a few seconds and power it on again. Routers sometimes need a reboot to clear out their memories.

paul11974 · 03-09-2007, 18:34

thank you for all the replys and yes i have rebooted the router several times and have not installed anything new on the pc and have run ad aware spybot and cc clean

mrmistoffelees · 03-09-2007, 18:46

I'd be interested to know what type of router it is. I suspect that this may be the age old problem of ICMP being blocked on the WAN port

paul11974 · 03-09-2007, 19:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrmistoffelees

I'd be interested to know what type of router it is. I suspect that this may be the age old problem of ICMP being blocked on the WAN port

LINKSYS WRT 54G

mrmistoffelees · 03-09-2007, 19:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by paul11974

LINKSYS WRT 54G

Do you know the verision number ? should say near the serial number

paul11974 · 03-09-2007, 19:57

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrmistoffelees

Do you know the verision number ? should say near the serial number

ver 7.00

mrmistoffelees · 03-09-2007, 20:18

Ok, done some digging not sure if the manual I have is for the same version. There should be however in the web filters section of the router something called block WAN request according to the manual this is enabled by default.

You need to disable this and then restart the router and then test again.

EDIT: I've attached the user manual, look at page 22

paul11974 · 03-09-2007, 22:30

Block Anonymous Internet Requests
Filter Multicast
* Filter Internet NAT Redirection ( just have a tick in this one now ) *
Filter IDENT(Port 113)