Inter office email and firewallprotection

Replace the switch with a router (they have built in firewalls). For email, download an email server program. If your ISP blockes port 25, fine the email server will only work inside the firewall, great for office to office email. I would suggest argosoft freeware email server.

Firewall, a router does not give true firewall protection. It does use NAT (Network Address Translation). However this is not a true firewall and there are ways that hackers can work around this on a router.

Here is a very cheap solution that I have found.
If you can find a old computer. Like a low end Pentium, 48 Meg RAM, and 2 gig hard drive. You will need to have Two NICS.
The software to install is IPCOP. This can be found on www.ipcop.org. It is free for the download. The two NICs will need to be standard and recognizable by the IPCOP. This is a Linux based program and is quite stable. Control is through a Web interface and can be run from another computer. I have used it a few times and found it to be very good for the small network. I would recommend reading the documentation before running the install. Note: You do NOT need to be familiar with Linux to run this. It is all GUI during the install and from the Web interface. There is the ability to use the command line to tweak the program, but it is not necessary.

As far as your network connection, you would normally connect your DSL router into a 'router' or 'firewall'. Then this would connect into your switch and from there, to your Nodes.

Hope this helps.

Michael R.

This question was closed by the author