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[Bob Goodwin]

Jacques B. wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 2, 2008 at 2:00 AM, Arthur Pemberton <pemboa at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> On Sat, Mar 1, 2008 at 1:04 PM, Bob Goodwin <bobgoodwin at wildblue.net> wrote:
>>  >  >>  Ports 995 and 587 had to be opened in the firewall and there was some
>>  >  >>  resubscribing stuff peculiar to the ISP required.  The user name had to
>>  >  >>  have @wildblue.net appended to it, etc.
>>
>>  You generally don't need to open ports to send email. Do you open port
>>  80 to browse the internet?
>>
>>
>>     
> Absolutely correct, unless the OP has a firewall rule that only allows
> incoming traffic originating from select ports (would be unusual for
> the average person and not something I've done, but I can't see why
> you couldn't have a rule that only allowed traffic originating from
> port 80 into the network for example to prevent kids from using IRC,
> gaming, P2P or IM applications, outside of those web based IM clients
> designed to get around such limitations).
>
> But outside of that scenario Arthur is correct.  Your system is
> initiating an outgoing connection on a high port (above 1023) with a
> server on their port (port 80, port 993, port 22, whatever).  So when
> that traffic is coming back in, it's a stateful connection (you've
> initiated it, it's not being initiated by the outside) so it will come
> back through no problem on typical firewall setups as it's coming from
> port 993, port 80, etc, but connecting to that high port on your PC on
> which the original connection went out on.  Typically you find
> yourself having to open ports on your firewall if you are hosting a
> service (i.e. web server) to allow incoming connections to that port
> on your computer vs you going out on a high port to connect to that
> service port on another computer.
>
> Jacques B

    Firestarter  outbound traffic is set to "restrictive by default" and
    when it blocks a function I need I open that port.  That seemed like
    a conservative approach to me, am I wrong? 

    Bob Goodwin