How the firewall protects you?
So, how exactly the firewall protects your computer and the important private information on it? To answer this question,
we will need some background information about how the Internet works. Although this is very big topic, we only need a simplified
explanation. If you want a better understanding of all the inner workings, you can refer to Wikipedia or other online in-depth
publications.
In general, the Internet is a global net of all connected computers. The structure of the Internet is not essential for our
discussion. It is sufficient to say that the information between all connected computers is exchanged in small data units, called
packets. Each packet can travel along a long and twisted route, passing though dozens or even hundreds of other computers,
before reaching its destination. In order to understand each other, all computers use a common set of rules, called Internet Protocol (IP).
Each computer on the Internet has its unique address, called IP address. For example the computer that contains (hosts) the Web site
of CNN has IP address 157.166.226.26.
Lets see what happens when you go to the web site of CNN (www.cnn.com). Because it is not very convenient to remember such numerical addresses,
there is another protocol - DNS, which is used to convert the name www.cnn.com to the IP address of the same computer. To do so,
your computer sends a DNS request packet to another computer (called DNS server) and asks it for the IP address of www.cnn.com. The DNS server sends
a DNS response packet with the requested information and our computer is ready to send another request packet to the computer of CNN and then waits
for its response, which will contain the requested web page.
As you can see, in vast majority of cases, your computer acts like a client - it sends request packets to other computers
(called servers) and waits for their response. Please note that in this case your computer initiates the connection and the connection is
outgoing. This leads us to the simplest type of firewall - one that blocks incoming connections and allows all outgoing connections from your PC.
Examples of such firewalls are the built-in firewalls in Windows XP and Vista. While this type of firewall provides some protection, it leaves a
lot to be desired because it makes one dangerous assumption - that all programs or your computer are not malicious and can be trusted to create
outgoing network connections as they want.
More advanced firewalls, like Mil Firewall, are inspecting both incoming and outgoing connections. Furthermore, they remember which program
is initiating each connection and then use this information to do better job without getting in the way (also called stateful inspection). However,
there is another drawback - the more advanced firewalls tend to use a lot of CPU and network resources and slow down your computer.
With the special firewall protection scheme, used in Mil Firewall, you do not have to sacrifice the speed of your computer in order to
block hacker attacks and malware. Mil Firewall is the fastest firewall software and it is very flexible and powerful.
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2.8 MB - 20 sec with broadband or 6 minutes with dial-up link
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