is ics effective - Tech Support Forums

sr71000 · October 10th, 2004, 01:45 PM

i have a network with 3 computers and all but one of them are crap...they can't handle a firewall and still be effective, but they're all my mom and gram have for now. I have a sucky computer also..but it is good enough for me. I was to set up ics (it does have xp home) so that only i need a firewall. i don't care much about the other computers being hacked or whatever...i usually end up reformating them once every few months because they need and and there is nothing important on them, but they use my printer, so any hacker that gets to them has instant access to me. Is ics a good way to have my computer run a firewall?? i also have a router with a hardware firewall and nat. so i'd kind of be opening my computer up to attack, taking it out from behind the nat and firewall built into my router, but i need to get the firewall and stuff off the other computers, they are just too old. Thanks

RamonGTP · October 10th, 2004, 02:02 PM

Why not just use the router instead of ICS. Just having the router in the loop makes it a lot harder for someone to hack into your machines. Not fool proof or anything, nothing is, but it makes it harder to hack into a machine that it would be if you had one computer hooked directly to your modem and the others hooked to it via ICS. It would also be faster and there would be no need to keep one computer on at all times.

**GroundZero3** · October 10th, 2004, 02:08 PM

ICS is not a firewall. ICS is just nat. it takes incoming and outgoing connections and forwards them. If you run ICS you will need to install a third party firewall or if you are using xp enable the built in one

just use the router

elroy · October 10th, 2004, 02:40 PM

Use the router and all the computers are protected by the hardware firewall and NAT. This also eliminates the issue of needing the host machine always turned on when you use ICS.

sr71000 · October 10th, 2004, 03:04 PM

my host machine is always turned on anyways..because i don't know when they need to print and i'm not always home and it's a file server in my house...so that's no problem. i know ics isn't a firewall, but i use zone alarm pro (can't stand icf) and thanks guys. i was currious which way would be the most secure way to keep my network. its a router...so i know it has nat but how can i tell if it has a firewall. im almost positive it does...but i'm not 100% sure...just want to double check.

but you guys think as long as there is a firewall on my router i don't need to bother with software firewalls on my other computers that can't handle it. sorry if i'm asking stupid questions...but idk much about ics. thanks