Firewalls are software programs that are specifically designed to safeguard your computer from foreign attacks. They are used to keep the track of the incoming users and the outgoing packets from your computer. You might be amazed how a firewall can understand that this is the same users who have visited or is he a new comer. Does firewall know the name of the person using the computer? But in that case there can be so many persons with a common name. Like, you can many persons with the name Jones connected to your network. If not names, then how?
The answer is by IP address. This is the measure used by the firewall to distinguish among the various users connected to your network. IP address is basically a unique address given to every new user that joins the internet. It is a 32 but long sequence thus we can get large number of IP addresses, even more than the number of persons on this earth. But with the increasing umber of computers this 32 but long sequence proves to be just not enough to hold the addresses for more than 10 decades and hence we have developed another 64 bit IP address which is an advanced version of the earlier address. This is about the IP address. But now what happens is that the firewall monitors the inflow and outflow of packets form the computer it is working for.
If the firewall recognizes the IP address of the person, then it will allow the packet from that person’s computer to come into the system of the user else the packet will be discarded and a message will be generated for the user that, this IP address tried to send some data to your computer. Now if the user authenticates the data, then from the next time all the packets will be allowed. Firewall plays a significant role when you want to block a particular user. You can set the firewall accordingly. You can also set the firewall to a trusted setting, where in all the users are your friends. In this mode the firewall will not block any of your friends. The method used by the firewall is termed as the Stateful Inspection method where the Packets are compared trusted information and if found genuine, access is guaranteed. This is how firewall keeps you protected all the time.
by Camila 1 year ago
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