Firewall for Website

[Guest Fred]

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]

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

>

>

>