Firewall & Port Basics

that’s
even more enjoyable. Perhaps it’s the satisfaction of realizing that the car
you just passed in the last lap is being driven by a real person, like you, and
not some computer program.

But the Internet connection that makes gaming so much fun also serves as a
doorway through which nefarious hackers can send malicious code, causing havoc
with your computer. Broadband users are especially fertile targets for bad
seeds. That’s why a firewall is so important. A good firewall, such as Internet
Connection Firewall (ICF) that comes with Windows XP, protects your computer
from attacks.

A firewall works by blocking communication ports that da88 are used to transfer
data to and from your PC. However, games (and all applications that work over
the Internet) use those ports to communicate. This raises some questions that
we frequently encounter on message boards and in the Usenet: how does a
firewall affect the performance of online gaming? What do you have to do to
enjoy online gaming with a firewall in place? I’ll answer these questions in
this article.

How Ports Work
To get the most out of online gaming through a secure connection, you have to
have some idea of how games communicate over the Internet and how a firewall