Today marks the last of my days on dial-up! After a long and prolonged wait for British Telcom to come up with a suitably decent Apple compatible Broadband/ADSL modem they delivered a neat little silver box to my door this morning, namingly a BT Voyager 100 USB ADSL Modem.
After initial problems getting things going, I'm now online with way decent download and outstanding upload speeds.
When I'm in the 'States I'm used to Ethernet connections on everything and it's basically a case of plug and go. With this USB modem, I have to use the Internet Connect app (menu bar item) to establish a connection to the 'net. Not all that much hassle, but a little dissapointing, considering I use an iBook and have to go through this little rigmarole every time I take my laptop out of my bag.
Anyway, it might not be Ethernet but I'm finally Broadbanding...
Can anyone tell me the best way to set-up a firewall? I've read innumerable reports and the like, telling me that computers with 'static' connections are subject to hacking attemps, at least more so than dial-up connected machines because of the constant connection.
What exactly does a firewall do? And what application should I use for this purpose. I notice that OS X has a Firewall option in System Preferences: Sharing - is this adequate to the task?
Secondly, I have noticed that Apple's Mail app has stopped allowing me to send e-mail. Since coming over to Broadband I've had errors telling me that mail cannot be sent on Port 25. Should I change this to another port in the prefs?
Any help/comments are greatly appreciated!
Chris
After initial problems getting things going, I'm now online with way decent download and outstanding upload speeds.
When I'm in the 'States I'm used to Ethernet connections on everything and it's basically a case of plug and go. With this USB modem, I have to use the Internet Connect app (menu bar item) to establish a connection to the 'net. Not all that much hassle, but a little dissapointing, considering I use an iBook and have to go through this little rigmarole every time I take my laptop out of my bag.
Anyway, it might not be Ethernet but I'm finally Broadbanding...
Can anyone tell me the best way to set-up a firewall? I've read innumerable reports and the like, telling me that computers with 'static' connections are subject to hacking attemps, at least more so than dial-up connected machines because of the constant connection.
What exactly does a firewall do? And what application should I use for this purpose. I notice that OS X has a Firewall option in System Preferences: Sharing - is this adequate to the task?
Secondly, I have noticed that Apple's Mail app has stopped allowing me to send e-mail. Since coming over to Broadband I've had errors telling me that mail cannot be sent on Port 25. Should I change this to another port in the prefs?
Any help/comments are greatly appreciated!
Chris