I was wanting to know if somebody out there could give me a bit of advice? Currently I have a four computer Home network setup two workstations one server and a laptop connected through a wireless link. Right now from my cable modem it goes to a Linksys wireless router and then to my machines. When I go to Shields-Up and have have ports tested out. I took the ports that was open and forwarded the ports on the router to ip addresses that don't exist. I was thinking about puting a linux firewall in between the cable modem and the router. What software for the firewall should I use? I was thinking about using iptables but I read on a few threads something about shorewall. What is the best one to use for a newbie? Or should I just learn IPtables? Thanks RadarG

Depending on the model of Linksys router, you should already have a firewall installed. Most of the newer routers come with the option of blocking all WAN requests, which is good for keeping out alot of the garbage. Several of the Linksys wireless routers actually run a standard Linux kernel with proprietary add-ons. So putting up a dedicated firewall isn't a necessity, but "the more, the better".

As for the open ports, it's kind of strange that you have any at all, but forwarding them off to nowhere probably isn't the best thing to do networking-wise. I would check out the Linksys docs to see why they're open and try and close them.

An easy way to setup a firewall is with the firestarter front-end. It has an easy to use GUI and is fairly flexible. Alot of people seem to recommend shorewall as well. If you want to actually understand what you're doing, learn iptables. It will be one of the harder things to grasp, but you'll learn a ton.

From the shorewall website
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What is it?
The Shoreline Firewall, more commonly known as "Shorewall", is a Netfilter (iptables) based firewall that can be used on a dedicated firewall system, a multi-function gateway/router/server or on a standalone GNU/Linux system.
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IPTables is the software that is truly the firewall. Shorewall is an application or script that makes it easier to use iptables (iptables is somewhat cryptic and non intuitive for the n00b) For a dedicated firewall box I suggest smoothwall or ipcop.

both will do what you want with a nice webbased interface making it a cinch. Hopefully this cleared up some misconceptions.

Links
www.smoothwall.org
http://www.ipcop.org

btw - learning iptables is good. It will make you appreciate the work that people put into tools like smoothwall and ipcop.

Thanks for the info guys. I'll give it a try when I get back to the states. Right now I'm enjoying my vaction the worlds largest beach...minus the water. RadarG