Controlling Inbound Access to Your LAN

If you follow the advice we outline in this chapter, all the computers on your network are well secured from unauthorized access by anyone who isn't directly connected to your network. So, what do you do when you actually want to allow people to share resources on your network from the Internet? You open up connections very selectively, and you pay a great deal of attention to security. And, if possible, you find an alternative that accomplishes the same goal without requiring you to compromise the security of your network or your computer.

In general, any solution that allows outside access to your network involves two potentially dangerous actions: running a server program that listens for incoming connections, ...

Get Microsoft® Windows® XP Networking and Security Inside Out: Also Covers Windows 2000 now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.