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Lan vs. Wan; which is best or can they be compared?
Second I went from a Linksys Befsr41 router which worked very well and hid my ip address and was Lan based, to a Lnksys Befsx41 firewall router which works but is more complicated and wants to use the ip address instead of the router address and is wan based. I switched from the router to the firewall router because I was advised to, as I was told that the firewall router was much more secure.
I want the firewall router to use the routers address not the ip address.
Any help would be much appreciated.
Thank you.
You're complicating it too much. Just use a good 802.11b compliant router and don't worry about the firewall. All routers will block traffic but are not as secure as a good independent (not MS's built in one) firewall. Just set up your router, modem, and computer without router or modem software, and forge ahead. You may have to go to the router's web page (usually something like a URL of 192.168.1.1 with a password of admin) and make some adjustments that will be explained on their web site, but many times you won't have to.
LAN and WAN are not competitive. They complement each other, and are, in fact, not really associated.
The IP will be assigned in most cases dynamically to the router.
Am I correct in assuming your using high speed cable or DSL?
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Yes to high speed connection. The main problem is that the firewall router wants to use the gateway mode which reveals the ip address and wont work when it is switched to router mode.
The other router automatically used the routers address (192.168.1.1).
Just to clarify when you said that "All routers will block traffic but are not as secure as a good independent (not MS's built in one) firewall." Are you talking about router firewalls or actual system firewalls?
Thanks.
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System firewalls. Like McAfee's personal firewall for example. Those router IPs, if revealed to anyone else, don't matter. Everyone has the same. That's shorthand.
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Frankenstein,
I had the befsr41 for 1 1/2 years before it went bad. When I bought mine it had a spi (stateful packet inspection) firewall on it. About six or eight months after I bought it I got some stupid idea to update the firmware. Well to my surprise, could you imagine the spi firewall was no more. Go figure, about that time they were coming out with the newer firewall router for more $.Humm get my drift. So I found the old version of firmware (1.42.7) on their website. Which by the way I can't find anymore. Anyway I flashed the old firmware back on there and then I have my old spi firewall back. Which I'm pretty sure is the same firewall as your new one has, so if you want to take the new router back I can e-mail you the older firmware for the befsr41. Just write back if so. I'm pretty sure it would not be Illegal or anything like that. By the way your router has a lan(local area network) address and a wan(wide area network)address. The your pc's plug into the lan side and it gives them an address automatically and they see your router as being at 192.168.1.1, this is the router's lan address your pc's might have got 192.168.1.2 or 192.168.1.3 etc. as an address from the router. The wan side is the side that plugs into the cable modem and it gets it's address from the modem like your pc's get their's from the router. That address to is probably something like 192.168.0.2 or something like that although different modems give out different addresses. This is why anytime you have to restart your router or modem you have to start them in this order, modem, router and then the pc's. Now the modem also has two addresses Lan side and Wan ,the lan is the one twards the inside of your network and the Wan is the public address which the modem gets from your isp. The router will see the modems lan address as the pc's see the router's lan address. You can check out this site.
http://www.homenethelp.com/web/diagram/share-router.asp
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Hi
from your initial question some understanding about the jargon used here is needed, A lan is a local area network it can be segmented by subnetting there is no indication of size, whereas a wan is simply a number of lans linked over a geographical distance.so the comparison is really about wan's being bigger networks ,though this is proberly a simplified description for some ppl.
With regards to your router the befsr41 uses NAT network address translation , this means your internal lan or pc ip is separate from the visible internet ip, the router accepts the ip leased to you by your isp and acts as a gateway allowing traffic each way, reitterating scottB, the important part here is no one can "see" your internal network without the aid of say a trojan or remote access so install a good antivirus and if it makes you feel better a software firewall like kerio or zonealarm.
regards
Jr
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I understand that, what I am trying to explain is that the firewall router is exposing my ip address and my isp and it shouldnt. At least the non firewall router hides everything. There are certain websites where you can check to see if your ip address and isp are exposed, they do not have to be when your on the internet; and when I was on the non firewall router (Befsr41) it hid everything, but I cant seem to get the firewall router (Befsx41) to do this like it should.
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I just conducted a test and it is the routers ip address that is showing which is fine ,but my isp, os and ie version are showing, is there any way to block that or is that info that goes with the router?
Thanks.
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You conducted a test with what? Go here
http://www.auditmypc.com/ and you will see that your public IP address will be shown. If you get on the internet and open your browser to a page, the browser sends a request to the address of that page. If your browser does not send your Public address that server for that page wouldn't know where to send that page to reach your pc. Some people would say you could use a proxy server but that's another story. When you go to a page what's really happening is your browser is sending info like your OS, Browser, weather you have java installed or active X or macromedia etc etc. the list goes on and on. This is so that server knows what to send you. On one test it will even show you your IP address of your individual pc, but that is because Internet Explorer tells them that. Because it is so closely tied to the Windows operating system. I tried the same test with the Mozilla Firebird browser, on the same PC right after I did it with IE and it wouldn't show. Again it is normal for the web page to see your public address. If you go to this site and do the real IP address test go to the internet options and disable java. Then do test and then enable java then close IE and then open again and redo test and see what happens. Hope this helps.
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