Fresh System Administrator

Hey folks !! ..

I'm not all that new to networking.I've read several manuals and books on networking.

But i really lack practical experience as i didn't have access to a network during the time i

did my studies. Now i've been made the system administrator of my college!. The former

administrator advised me not to put up a firewall as it would really slowdown the connection(

64kbps :mad: ).He thinks that noone would ever wanna hack into the network. I know its not

safe to practice security by obscurity. There isn't any data of great importance too in these

systems.The network is just used for students to access the internet. I know there

are a lot of experienced people out there in AO. I really need your advice.

Get a firewall..get a firewall...get a firewall. It's as simple as that.

Lesson 1 I learned wayback in the day. Always use someone else's computers to do your dirty work. The prime targets of choice for this are colleges, because normally their security is lax.

Guess what? your school fits the mold. Bro, without that firewall, you're proxy heaven for some pretty nasty stuff going on, both from within and outside your school. Lock it down. Lock it down hard. Getting the firewall is just the first step.

Congrats on the promotion and luck to you!

I think you will get the same response from everyone here; get a firewall in place even if its a free software based one. That would be better than nothing

A firewall will not slow down your connection.... It might have done a 1000 years ago but we have advanced a little since the abacus.

I totally understand your situation. I was the fresh admin with nothing but book experience beforehand myself, as I didn't have a network to really learn on either. That was last December. Many AO threads and a few months later, and I'm starting to get a pretty good grip on things (a lot of thanks due to the above poster inparticular).

Hang in there and ask us lots of questions. You'll rack up practical experience in no time now that you're behind a real network.

But I agree with everyone else. Get a firewall. It shouldn't hurt your network performance. You may have no critical data to protect, but your systems can still be used by attackers for malicious purposes, i.e., being turned into zombies, etc.

So tigershark .. r u saying that a firewall won't affect the speed ?

facts of life:

1) yes, some will hack your computer even with that bandwidth. Just because
a) kiddies have nothing betther to do;
b) sometimes is a automated process (a bot) the invade a system; it doesnt matter if t is 10Mb or a 33k dial up - every resource has a value
2) As Tiger notice, it wont slowdown a connection - depending on of characteristics of firewall, it can even get your connection better - buffer contention, compressing - and a proxy-cache will improve your http response time
3) Prolly that admin you've mencioned has no knowledge of firewall and saying that crap he can avoid to learn it.

Thanks all ...... I'll get a firewall as soon as possible...

Yupper-roo
Get a firewall. The "dont use XXXX on the network it will slow it down" is used a lot for virus scanning and firewalls, etc.

The real answer to that is improperly configured firewalls will slow it down. I know a colledge admin that uses the same reasoning, and refuses to wall up his network. He cames he has never been hacked..... I just add never that he knows of. And it has been a major issue with some of the other business that deal with the school, but he hasn't budged yet.

Sighh. Get a firewall.
:)