5.3.4 Firewall
Firewall and Access Control
Your router includes a full SPI (Stateful Packet Inspection) firewall for controlling Internet access from your LAN, as well as helping to prevent attacks from hackers. In addition to this, when using NAT (Network Address Translation) the router acts as a “natural” Internet firewall, since all PCs on your LAN use private IP addresses that cannot be directly accessed from the Internet. See the WAN configuration section for more details on NAT.
Firewall: Prevents access from outside your network.
NAT natural firewall: This masks LAN users’ IP addresses, which are invisible to outside users on the Internet, making it much more difficult for a hacker to target a machine on your network. This natural firewall is on when the NAT function is enabled.
When using Virtual Servers (port mapping) your PCs are exposed to the ports specified opened in your firewall packet filter settings.
Firewall Security and Policy (General Settings): Inbound direction of Packet Filter rules
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