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A firewall is a hardware or software solution for securing a network to protect from unauthorized access. A firewall can also be able to protect the data from flowing out of the network.
Generally a firewall is configured with certain set of rules that decide which traffic has to be allowed and which has to be blocked.
Firewall in Windows:
Firewall in Windows was first introduced with Windows XP Service Pack 2 and by default it is turned on.
This watches and restricts information traveling between our
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computers and Internet or network. It also protects our computer from any hacker accessing it outside the Windows Firewall.
To Enable/Disable Windows Firewall:
Start-> Run-> Type “Firewall.cpl” and press OK-> “Windows Firewall” window opens-> On the General tab click “on” or “off”.
Firewall in MAC OS X “Jaugar”:
MAC OS X has a built in firewall and by default it is turned off.
To enable/disable MAC OS firewall:
Go to sharing system preference-> select “Firewall” tab->click on “Start” or “Stop”.
Even though we get these default firewalls for Windows or MAC, we are always allowed to use any other firewalls we wish for our computer.
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Firewalls protect our computer from outside hacker attacks. If you are the first time user of firewalls, it is advisable to get it configured by some experienced person. This is because if firewalls are not configured properly they may block us from doing some tasks on the internet in our own system
But the system may get slower with these firewalls. If we do not want our system to get slow because of firewalls, we can go for hardware firewall which does not affect our system's performance.
A hardware firewall comes like a small box connecting between the computer and the router. They provide more protection than the software firewalls and operate independently of our system's software.
They can even protect all the computers in a network. But they are much expensive and difficult to configure than the software firewalls.
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