Let's talk about yum and p2p in Fedora

[Joe Zeff]

On 12/27/2010 09:15 AM, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> Actually IIRC you have that the wrong way round. NAT was invented to
> deal with address space exhaustion, and had the side-effect of hiding
> machines behind the router.

Before somebody steps in again to point out that NAT isn't a firewall, 
I'd like to give my perspective on it.  If your router uses NAT and only 
forwards those ports you've told it to (and then, each port only goes to 
one machine) port scanners can't find your machines because nothing 
responds to their attempts to connect.  And, of course, even if you have 
malware trying to act as some sort of server it won't do any good unless 
your machine initiates the connection.  No, this isn't a firewall, but 
it's better than having your box sitting on the net completely exposed. 
  Consider NAT as one layer of protection in a properly designed and 
implemented defense in depth.