Firewall or not ...

[Marius M. Rex]

On Wed, 2005-09-21 at 19:20 +0000, Marcin Jessa wrote:
> On Wed, 21 Sep 2005 21:05:36 +0200
> Kiffin Gish <kiffin at gish.demon.nl> wrote:
> 
> > I have installed FreeBSD 5.4 on my Dell Inspiron 8200 using WiFi to 
> > access the Internet.
> > 
> > My question is what are the pros and cons of running a firewall on my 
> > client, e.g. is it really necessary.
> > 
> > I mean it's not like I am running Windows and have to bloat it with all 
> > McAfee, Zonealarm ad infinitum -- or do I?
> > 
> > Thanks alot in advance.
> 

I have a firewall set up on my laptop, as it is company policy.  FreeBSD
makes it fairly simple to set up and use with the options
in /etc/rc.conf, and I rarely have any need to tweak it.  I have a
fairly lightly modified "CLIENT" type firewall.   DHCP is an issue, but
a quick script at boot can be used to grab the dynamic IP without too
much trouble.  Otherwise I really do not have performance issues,
connectivity problems, etc, that are worth mentioning.  

I like to keep a decent eye on security, but to my knowledge I have
never run into an occasion where someone has tried to hack me into my
laptop through wireless or wired, in a way that would work.  I have
certainly seen attempted MS-Windows hacks, etc.  But nothing that would
actually effect FreeBSD.  I keep the system fairly up to date, and
rarely have any problems with security.  (The problems I have had, a
firewall would not fix anyway.)  I highly suspect that I could stop
using the firewall all together and it would not make that much of a
difference.    So do you need a firewall?  Probably not.  But since it
is really not that hard to set up and manage on FreeBSD, I would advise
anyone to use one if they can.
 
-- 
Marius M. Rex
Sr. System Admin.
Community Connect Inc.
marius at communityconnect.com