OT: ADSL safe practices and setting up a home network

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Fri, Apr 14, 2006 at 09:00:55 -0400,
  Debbie Deutsch <fedoralist at ddeutsch.org> wrote:
> 
> These days, routers come with the "firewall" capabilities built in.  If
> you stick with any of the major brands you probably will be fine.  (I
> have no horror tales about obscure manufacturers, but I *know* you will
> almost certainly be okay if you get a model from, say, Linksys or NetGear.)

Buying major brand firewalls is go guarenty of not having problems. Some
bonehead decisions have been made in the past in order to reduce support
costs for consumer level firewall devices.

For someone that doesn't know what they are doing, a consumer level hardware
firewall device is a cost effective way to gain some protection.

These hardware firewalls are really just software firewalls with the software
loaded from firmware. Their advantages are low cost for a dedicated firewall
and quietness.