is an airport base station firewall enough protection?

[blappy]

I was wondering if the firewall in my airport base station as well as having the firewall option switched on on my mac is enough protection. I see that the airport takes the actual IP address from my ISP, and I have a local IP address, so that sounds good, right?

what about using an anonymous proxie server? Should I investigate this?

AND, I have no virus protection software installed - I did for many years, but never found a virus, so I bailed on it - am I a dummy?

cheers!!

blappy

[rainman::|:|]

I'll assume you're running OS X.

X is very secure by nature, with few vulnerabilities. Apple's software updates keeps a tight ship, be sure you're updating your software on a regular basis. Using an Airport setup provides one more barrier between your computer and the internet, so it's safer than OS X's firewall alone, and I leave my own computer with just my built-in firewall. I think you'll be just fine, much more secure than 90% of computers on the internet.

As for viruses, again I wouldn't worry. Macs are notoriously almost invulnerable to virii... If you are paranoid, as some are, it doesn't hurt anything to install one. But it's not something I would consider a necessity...

pnw

[Daveman Deluxe]

As far as the firewall goes, you're perfectly all right with your setup. A couple of things though:

-I HIGHLY recommend turning on the 128-bit encryption. That way, people can't get credit card numbers off of you as the signal is en route from your Mac to the base station.
-I also highly recommend changing the name of the wireless network. Loads of folks never change the name of their wireless networks, and that is a bad thing.
-Consider turning off DHCP and using manual IP addresses. If you do this, also change your local IP address range from the default (I recommend 192.168.x.x).
-Disable automatic wireless network name broadcasting (I forget what that is called specifically).

If you can't figure out how to do some of these, don't bother too much--but those first two are MUST-DO things.

As for virus protection, you don't need it. If you get it anyway, DON'T USE NORTON. Use something else, use anything but Norton.

[blappy]

hey! thanks for the help.

I did what you told me with the airport config.

cheers!!

blappy

I agree with you re: norton...

I believe that in some circles they call it "Norton Futilities"