General Firewall Help
The following is intended to help you use GuildFTPd with firewall software. It is not intended to provide information for all firewalls, but simply provide some general information to point you in the right direction.
As Internet security concerns heighten, more and more users are installing firewall software on their computers. This is especially becoming common on computers that are connected to the Internet through cable or dsl connections. The trick to using any software on a computer that has a firewall installed is understanding how the firewall works.
A firewall is a very restrictive piece of software by default. It limits the connections from your computer to the Internet by default. It also limits the connections to your computer from the Internet by default. This means that you need to change the default configuration of your firewall to allow GuildFTPd and the FTP clients to communicate with each other.
The basics to setting up a
firewall to work with GuildFTPd include the following.
- Make sure that you've set up your firewall to allow
connections to the guildftpd.exe program, if necessary.
- Make sure that you're allowing connections on all of the
necessary FTP ports that you've configured within GuildFTPd (single
ports and/or port ranges).
- Make sure that you've set up your firewall to allow
inbound (connections from other computers - to your computer) and
outbound (connections from your computer or to other computers).
NOTE: If you set GuildFTPd's primary port to 2100 or another non-standard port, make sure that you don't duplicate that port in your passive port range. Example: If you use 2100 for your primary port, make the passive range start at 2101 or 2102.
| PROS and CONS to using a FIREWALL |
| PROS |
| 1. It is approximately half the price of a DSL/Cable router. |
| 2. It is more secure and restricted when first installed. |
| 3. Can be used on a computer that accesses the Internet through a standard modem (dial-up) connection. |
| CONS |
| 1. Restrictive installation defaults can become annoying and frustrating to change. |
| 2. Isn't very effective when you're trying to share an Internet connection through one computer to many others. (Due configuration necessary to get/keep things working and the need for additional software to actually share the connection) |
| 3. Requires you make backups of complex configurations, as if your computer gets replaced or needs to be re-installed or set up... you'll need to configure it all over again. |
Don't forget to check the syslog.txt and make sure that GuildFTPd is recording a Success audit for the ListenSocket Create and ListenSocket Listen options for your FTP port. If they aren't Success, you probably have another program running that is using the same port. You'll need to reconfigure GuildFTPd or the other program to prevent the conflict.