[NCSA-discuss] firewall for WinXP

[Alan Porter]

> If you mean, can you put your Windows laptop on the Internet with a 
> firewall blocking all ports, sure. The only thing it would prevent 
> would be resource sharing (files, printing, etc).


And, of course, any services that you had installed on top of the base O/S.

Jeff, there's a lot of apps/services that listen on ports, not just 
file/print sharing. These may be the only ones that are present in a 
fresh install, but that's not a very realistic expectation for a server.

Joe, personally I would only run a Windows box behind a Linux firewall. 
But that's just me. I'm sure there are several others who would say that 
the built-in Windows firewall is as good as iptables, shorewall, or 
whatever else you run under Linux.

Alan



.