Sams Teach Yourself Network Troubleshooting in 24 Hours, Second Edition

Hour 16. Firewall and Proxy Server Basics

Three can keep a secret if two are dead.

——Benjamin Franklin

This is a scary yet kind of fun hour. I hope you’ve brought your secret detective code ring and your security blanket. We’re going to go seriously James Bond here; you can expect a couple of nifty devices, explosions, bad guys, good guys, and gunplay by the end of the hour. Okay, no. But we are going to talk about network security, and how firewalls and proxies fit into the security picture of most organizations.

For some reason, the public perception seems to be that a firewall or proxy server is the major security concern on any network. In reality, although a well-configured firewall or proxy server is really, really important, it’s only ...