Posted by A coder on July 16, 2000 at 11:35:08:
In Reply to: What is a firewall and is it possible there is one at work to keep me from mudding? posted by Saltimbanko on July 16, 2000 at 11:26:47:
A firewall is something used for security purposes in a company, a school, hell.. anywhere that has a network. You don't need a firewall for your network to operate, but the vast majority of them do. The reasons for this... What a firewall actually is is one central point that all communication to and from a network has to travel through. The sort of foreman of this operation is called the Proxy. Through the Proxy a company can block out any number of sites or activities. For example, they could shut off the transfer of UDP packets. (ICQ uses UDP packets on a port of 9000 I believe, or else it does NOT function.) They can shut off access to a specific website, like microsoft.com. They can even shut off your ability to TELNET anywhere. Another main use of firewalls is to prevent virii from penetrating a company's network. As the information comes in through the proxy, it is scanned for any known virii and spit back if anything is found, as to keep the network safe. So, as you can see, a firewall is extremely useful and versatile.. however with all the virus alerts in recent months, and for productivity reasons, many companies merely have 'web access' enabled.. so that you can only surf the web.. not FTP or TELNET anywhere. I hope, for your sake, that this is not the case.. To verify this try downloading another telnet client. The one I use is called ZOC and can be found at emtec.com. I hope I helped...
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