Routers, Firewalls, and Network Address Translation (NAT)… uh, I’m confused

Routers, firewalls, and NAT are key devices and/or technologies to help ensure that your home and work are as secure as they can be. Let’s step back a minute and first talk about what is a “reasonable amount of security” one needs to not get “hacked”. Well, first off most people that throw around the term “hacking” or “hacker” wouldn’t have the first clue how to exploit a security hole in Windows, design a ping flood script, or issue a denial of service attack (DOS). These things are relatively complicated to do. Yeah, if one were so inclined you could, after a little digging, find some pre-made scripts on the internet to do several of the aforementioned things. However even if somebody were to find these scripts they would still have to find a target of their maliciousness, and then tailor the script to execute against this target. Computer security was once best described to me by a co-worker of mine in stating: “Security is really the level of inconvenience that you wish a potential attacker to go through to achieve their goal.” This is absolutely true. For the really “gifted” hackers out their the reality is that, there isn’t much that will stop them. These are also the same types of people or groups that are more likely to target an insurance company or a bank than they are a small business or individual.

Now let’s get back on track. Let’s define each of these things: router, firewall, and NAT. A router is a software or hardware device that works like a traffic cop. It takes packets of data and ensures that they are directed to the correct part of a network. A router for home users frequently connects a users local network to the internet. A firewall is a device, once again that can be software or hardware, that offers security options and in some instances packet filtering. It’s goal is to allow a user to define what type of traffic to allow on a network. Network address translation (or NAT) is a technology that is typically available on most routers. It’s goal is to obfuscate (hide/disguise) network devices on one side of a network with another network that a router is connecting to. See the diagram for an example.

Bottom line, most home network devices these days provide more than adequate security for your computers and data. Typically a wireless router that you can purchase at your favorite online or local retailer will be a router, firewall, and offer NAT all in one.

 Tags: computer security, firewall, network security, wireless router  Posted in: Computer Peripherals and Accessories