A firewall is an effective protection against hackers and cyber criminals. It is surprising that many users already have a powerful firewall available and do not even know it. Most wireless internet routers have a built-in hardware firewall and will not be active if not activated. How do turn off router firewall?
How routers work as hardware firewalls
Home routers use network address translation (NAT) to share one IP address from Internet services shared by many computers in the home. When inbound internet traffic arrives at the router, the router does not know which computer to redirect to, so it rejects the traffic. As a result, NAT works like a firewall that prevents incoming requests to your computer. Depending on the router, you can also block certain types of outgoing traffic by changing the router’s settings.
The router can forward some of the traffic by setting port forwarding or by placing the computer in the demilitarized zone (DMZ), where all incoming traffic is forwarded to it. The DMZ zone transfers all traffic to a specific computer – the computer will no longer benefit from the router’s operation as a firewall.
How do you turn off the router’s firewall?
Note the router’s IP address printed on the router’s label. If you don’t have an IP address, follow these steps to learn how to disable the router’s firewall.
On Windows:
- Press the Windows button and type cmd in the search box.
- Right-click the command prompt icon to select Run as administrator.
- When prompted for permission, click Continue.
- Type ipconfig / all in the command prompt window. Press Enter and continue how to disable the router’s firewall guide.
- Your IP address will be found in the Default Gateway section of the command line.
On a Mac:
- Go to System Preferences from the Apple Menu.
- Click the Network icon and select the Advanced tab.
- Go to the TCP / IP section to find the router’s IP address.
Disable the router’s firewall
- Open a website and enter the router’s IP address. Press enter.
- If you are prompted for a router password, enter it.
- Go to the Advanced Settings section of the Settings.
- Disable the firewall in the Settings menu. Uncheck the box next to Enable the default firewall.
- After completing the procedure for disabling the router’s firewall, click OK to confirm the settings.
Advantages of a hardware firewall
The hardware firewall is outside the computer – if a computer is infected with a worm, the worm can disable the software firewall. However, this worm could not disable the hardware firewall.
Hardware firewalls can provide centralized network management. If you’re running a large network, you can easily configure your firewall settings from a single device. It also prevents users from changing their computers.
