What is a Firewall?
A firewall is an application that manages the traffic allowed to pass between the inside and outside of a network. It does this based on established rules, similar to how you need approved documents to cross a border. Generally, all outgoing traffic is permitted; for instance, when you visit 4bishosting.com, you initiate a connection to the website, and this lets the router know that traffic from 4bishosting.com can return to you. If a hacker tries to access your PC, they approach from outside the firewall. A default firewall configuration would deny them access, preventing them from reaching your PC.
Where is the Firewall Located?
Firewalls can be located in various places. They exist in modems that provide home internet, in your PC, in the cloud (as we have, which keeps your website secure), and in many more places. Because firewalls are present in so many locations, your connection to a website passes through multiple firewalls. This happens behind the scenes, and you won’t notice it. All these firewalls ensure you can safely visit the websites you want.
Did you know
We at 4bis use it every day to ensure that your hosted website or email remains safe with us.
Why is a Firewall So Important?
A firewall ensures the security of your PC and network. Without it, anyone could establish a connection with your PC. Think of a firewall as your protection on the internet, similar to how a closed door prevents burglars from entering your home. If the door is open, anyone can just walk in and take things from your house.
This is almost the same with your firewall. If it’s wide open, someone can establish a connection. However, this doesn’t give them much initial advantage, as a connection can only be established if an application on your PC is also listening to a port on your PC.
This is almost the same with your firewall. If it’s wide open, someone can establish a connection. However, this doesn’t give them much initial advantage, as a connection can only be established if an application on your PC is also listening to a port on your PC.
How Does the Firewall Achieve This?
As explained earlier, the firewall determines what traffic is allowed to enter and exit. All this information is stored in the firewall. Of course, the firewall doesn’t store every address, only the ones that matter to it.
For instance, if you have a computer running a web server and you want to make it available to people outside your network, you need to tell the firewall that anyone can connect to it. This means only traffic from outside to the web server via port 443 is allowed. All other traffic remains blocked. On a firewall, a rule might look like this:
| Actief | Protocol | Source | Port | Destination | Port |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yes | IPv4 TCP | * | 443 | 192.168.1.25 | 443 |
In the above table, you can see a rule that allows the firewall to let all traffic from anywhere in the world connect to your web server, denoted by the *. The traffic must meet a condition; it uses IPv4 TCP to communicate with the web server on port 443. All this traffic is directed to the web server located at IP address 192.168.1.25 and port 443.
Hopefully, we’ve explained the basic principle of firewalls and why they play such a crucial role.
What is an ip address?
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An IP address is an address of a device connected to a network or ultimately to the Internet. IP addresses are specific identifiers used to uniquely address a particular ‘network card’ in the network. A network card, also known as NIC, is necessary to decode network traffic. You can best compare IP addresses to phone numbers.
IPv4 addresses consist of 32 bits, theoretically allowing for a maximum of 4.29 billion addresses. An example of an IPv4 address is 127.0.0.1.
IPv6 addresses, on the other hand, consist of 128 bits, theoretically allowing for a maximum of 340 undecillion addresses. An example of an IPv6 address is 2001:db8:85a3:8d3:1319:8a2e:370:7348.
What does IP in IP address actually stand for? IP stands for Internet Protocol.
IP addresses were conceived in 1989 and became a fundamental concept for the World Wide Web.
With this tool, you can look up your own or another IP address What is my IP address? >
