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When connecting to the internet from your computer, there are several
pieces of equipment that are used by your ISP and the companies
that host the websites that you wish to access.The most important
types of equipment used are routers and servers.
Routers are used to route information to and from your computer.
These routers allow your computer to eventually connect to the server
that hosts the website you want to access.
For example, let’s say I want to access www.findproxy.org from
some country in Europe. This URL is hosted on a hard drive in a
server in the USA. Thus, when the person in Europe sends the request
from his web browser after typing www.findproxy.org, the request
travels through the ISP’s routers to eventually connect to the server
in the USA that hosts the web site. During this process, additional
servers may be involved, like proxy servers, either from the ISP
or the hosting company. The server receives the request, retrieves
the URL’s information from its hard drive, and sends the information
back through routers to Europe, where the person will see the site
in his or her computer.
So, routers are an essential part of web browsing and information
transfer through the internet. In order for computers to communicate
with routers, different ports are used to send and receive data.
When a request is sent to a router, the port is opened to allow
that data to travel to the router and vice-versa.
However, when a port is opened to send or receive information,
it is vulnerable to outside attacks. Only ports that are open can
be attacked. It is important to open only ports that will be used
and protect them from any outside intruders. There are several ways
of protecting your ports, one of the most common being a firewall
or anti-virus program.
Thus, to avoid security problems, always make sure your anti-virus
database is up to date and that your firewall is properly configured.
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