How can I check if a firewall is working?

reg

We recently got a cable internet connection. We have a linksys router that has a firewall on it. A lady that is on the same cable network called and said that she could see one of our computers. The only thing she would see was the iTunes library. Since then I have reapplied the firewall on the router and changed the password. I gave her a call and she does not see it any more. I have also started the firewall on the laptop that the person saw. Is there anyway of checking to make sure that a firewall is working? I also started the filevault on the machine. How do I make sure that no one is getting into my home network?



reg

dmband0026

You can go into Applications/Utilities/Network Utility and do a "Port Scan" and look for open ports at a certain IP address (in this case, the IP of your router) you can also ping ports and see what happens there. As far as the filevault thing goes, DO NOT use it unless you have very sensitive personal and or corporate documents on your machine. It's too big of a risk that something could go wrong with it and your data will be lost forever. Just keep your machine secure, filevault isn't necessary (unless you fall into one of the categories I mentioned above or you want to take that risk.)

curiousuburb

http://grc.com/lt/leaktest.htm ~ Personal Firewall Tester (Win), but grc does online port scans too