tailieunhanh - Wireless all- In-One for Dummies- P9

Wireless all- In-One for Dummies- P9:I still remember when I got my first cordless phone. Suddenly, I didn’t have to run to the kitchen when the phone rang, I just carried the phone with me. I could make a phone call from wherever I was. Wireless meant freedom, and this is just a phone that I’m talking about! | Visiting the Windows Security Center 219 Figure 3-5 The Firewall Settings window. Figure 3-6 Vista prompts to allow a connection. The dialog box shown in Figure 3-6 is light on details. You re being asked to decide whether or not an application should accept connections. If you allow it the Windows firewall will allow incoming connections into this application. To be clear the application has requested the privilege of accepting connections. The first question you should ask is Did I just launch that application If the query came while you were in the middle of browsing the Web then you should be extra cautious. However in this case I ran the program. If you re not sure which program generated the alert then check the dialog box because it s listed there. Book IV Chapter 3 Protecting Your Computer 220 Visiting the Windows Security Center After you determine that the alert was as a result of a program you chose to run you should ask Is this the type of program that accepts network connections On the Internet a client your computer connects to a server to get some information. The connection is always made from one side to the other and having a connection come in to you if you re a client is rare. Therefore if you see an alert asking you if you d like to accept connections you should qualify the last question by asking yourself why someone would want to connect to me. You want incoming connections on the following scenarios When you re running some server software such as an FTP server. When you re running a peer-to-peer P2P file-sharing program that shares out parts of the file as you download the rest. When you re running some remote control software and want people to be able to control your computer. It s also important to note that if you re behind a router then people from the Internet can t make direct connections to you and wouldn t be able to connect to the application anyway. There are exceptions to this such as if you ve enabled port forwarding see Book .