WL500gpV2 - general security question.

[Dapper]

Hi everyone. I apologise for the nature of my questions, but being a total beginner with routers and linux, I need to ask.

I have just acquired a new WL500gpV2 and I have installed the WL500gpv2-1.9.2.7-d-r1445.trx firmware. Everything is working very well, but I have some concerns regarding inbound/outbound security.

At the present time my needs are very basic and consist of nothing more than ensuring the router is configured correctly to support my small LAN. the LAN consists of a single Windows 7 ultimate desktop, a single notebook running XPSP3 and a single notebook running SuSE 11.2. Later I will add a USB disk to the router.

My primary concern right now is security and ensuring that only the traffic I want is allowed in and out.

Typically, under Windows, it's quite common to run a firewall for outbound control when using a router. As this firmware has iptables implemented (which I still have to learn) is it necessary to run an additional firewall on the Windows boxes or can iptables on the router be configured to provide the necessary inbound/outbound control?

On a related note, I've seen some questions asked about the pros and cons of using the web interface as opposed to iptables, to configure such things as port forwarding, unfortunately, I wasn't able to find any answers.

Thanks for reading and any help provided.

P.S. will a general iptables tutorial be applicable to the implementation within the router?

[Dapper]

Any thoughts on the above, please?

Thanks

[wpte]

Running a firewall on your windows machines is always a good idea for a single reason: you can block unwanted programs instead of just ports and ip's:)

when you have a virus on your pc that likes to connect to the internet, it's still a better defense to use a local firewall that notifies you about that program.

IPtables are very advanced, and will give you good security from outside. inside to outside is usually not filtered.


P.S. will a general iptables tutorial be applicable to the implementation within the router?
a good begin for your post-firewall:

#!/bin/sh
# deleting last firewal rules (policy)
iptables -D INPUT -j DROP

#opens up port 80 to the router
iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT
#block an ip to access (ping etc.) your router
iptables -I INPUT -s 123.123.123.123 -j DROP

# Restablishing INPUT chain policy
iptables -A INPUT -j DROP

you can just add iptables between the INPUT rules like i've done here:)

[Dapper]

Thanks for the reply, it's most appreciated :)

having played with the router for several days now, I had more or less reached the same conclusion, so I've reinstalled my Windows 7 firewall, if only for piece of mind :)

Thanks also for the mini tutorial, I have been looking at iptables but I haven't implemented anything as yet.