[Leica] OT- Home wireless network question

[reid at mejac.palo-alto.ca.us (Brian Reid)]

If you have a router, you don't need or want things like Shields Up or 
ZoneAlarm.
The router does a much more effective job of protecting you from evil than 
such half-baked solutions.

Anyone who claims that there is a security difference between a port not 
responding to inbound packets and a port being closed is probably going to 
expand into selling bridges across the Hudson soon.

If I were you, I would deinstall ZoneAlarm, deinstall Shields Up, deinstall 
all of the software that you've bought to protect you from evil port and 
network things, and focus my energy on antivirus software, which is the only 
real threat of a NATted network such as the one you now have.

Do make sure you've set a WPA 128-bit password on your wireless LAN. Avoid 
WEP. I'm not familiar with WPE as a security protocol (it's a bridging 
protocol).