Besides keeping the existing BBS and lab running smoothly, we've all been working hard to implement the networking initiatives I've discussed in previous reports. A network firewall similarly protects a vulnerable part from a dangerous part while permitting controlled communication. With computer firewalls, the vulnerable part is a private LAN like ours, and the dangerous part is the public Internet.
Firewalls are by no means the ultimate in security, but they are certainly useful.
With our firewall in place, crackers attacking our network may be forced to crack the firewall itself first, before even starting on the regular servers. Our firewall machine also serves the purpose of network address translation. No other machine on our network could access the Internet. If lab users wanted services other than Web pages, for instance FTP files or telnet connections, they were out of luck. As well as being inconvenient, the situation was difficult for new users to understand because of the public perception that the Web and the Internet are the same thing.