Guest Fred Posted June 19, 2008 Posted June 19, 2008 I'm setting up my home PC to be a website. It's running WinPro XP SP2 and IIS 5.1 as the web server. My question is how do I configure the firewall to allow "anyone" to get to my site yet still keep a level of protection or do I have to take down the firewall completely? Thanks, Fred
Guest Phillip Windell Posted June 19, 2008 Posted June 19, 2008 Re: Firewall for Website In most home-user firewall devices they call the function "port-forwarding",...I disagree with the use of the term, but that's what they call it anyway. You have to tell the firewall to take packets that it receives on port 80 (and optionally 443) and pass it back the the same port number @ the IP# of the "web site". Keep in mind that a firewall protects by *not* allowing things. Hence you are now telling it to "not" protect the machine on port 80. The machine is still protected from traffic at other ports but it has effectively "dropped its pants" @ port 80. So, therefore your website's design and its code must be properly handled to not create security risks. The website's code and overall design is the last remaining line of defence apart from the Internet Information Service (IIS) itself and the machine's XP operating system. I beleive that the version of IIS in XP is limited to 10 concurrent connections and limited to only one "web site". You can have multiple Virtual Folders, but a website and a Virtual Folder are not quite the same thing. -- Phillip Windell http://www.wandtv.com The views expressed, are my own and not those of my employer, or Microsoft, or anyone else associated with me, including my cats. ----------------------------------------------------- "Fred" <Fred@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message news:398DCADE-539C-4F52-8725-90F6C41FAA28@microsoft.com... > I'm setting up my home PC to be a website. It's running WinPro XP SP2 and > IIS 5.1 as the web server. My question is how do I configure the firewall > to > allow "anyone" to get to my site yet still keep a level of protection or > do I > have to take down the firewall completely? > > Thanks, > Fred > > >
Recommended Posts