Would it be unwise to disable my NAT firewall ?(router is a SMC 7204BRA) No Hurry :)

[Gizmo78]

I feel that I am properly protected without it, And I would like my applications to run faster while connected to the internet, especially IE and some P2P.

I use Panda Antivirus, MS Antispyware, SpywareBlaster and PeerGuardian. Do I really need the NAT firewall to run as well ?

I have ran some diagnostic checks, and they all say that I have a NAT problem

[chrisbliss18]

Short answer
Yes, it would be very unwise.

Long answer
"I feel that I am properly protected without it". What do you base these feelings on? Do you base it on research that you have done that indicates that your software solutions are just as good at protecting your machine from attacks without NAT protection as they are with it? Do you base it on a full understanding of how attacks are made, how they can be guarded against, and the differences between hardware and software solutions against these attacks?

My words may be harsh, but my point is valid. Unless you are a security software and hardware expert, you have little idea of how complex attacks can be and how vulnerable your machine truely is without layers of comprehensive security. How do I know this? I'm an IT professional. I maintain a number of web servers, and I see how our boxes get attacked all day long. The more I have learned about how attacks work and how they exploit weaknesses in security, the more I realize that I know very little about the intricacies of designing and maintaining software and hardware that will offer the most protectection possible against all foreseeable attacks.

The way I think about it, there are four main lines of defense in computer security.

The first line of defense is your hardware. Think of the hardware security as being an armored fortress. It may not protect you from people that are already inside, but it does prevent a lot of unwanted guests from getting in without a lot of effort. If someone desides to hit your network with everything they've got (think of ping attacks and the like), your routing equipment will absorb most, if not all, of those attacks so that your computer is protected (if your computer took on all of those attacks, the attacker could cause your system to slow down to a crawl, force the system to reboot itself because it thinks that their is an error, or even find a hole to break into).

The second line of defense is the security of your operating system. All software has flaws, even operating systems. Most successful attacks occur not because someone forgot to put up enough security, but because the attacker found out what security the target was using and then exploited weaknesses in that security. If you've been using computers for more than a short amount of time, I'm sure that you've experienced situations that occured because someone walked right past all your security by exploiting a flaw in your operating system. The biggest Windows-focused attack I've ever been witness and victim to was the MSBlaster attack. This software had successfully attacked a very large portion of the computers attached to networks worldwide. Interestingly enough, if more people were using tightly-secured firewalls (provided by a router or some other device), then this attack wouldn't have spread nearly as far.

The third line of defense can be called "innoculation". Innoculation is changing the settings on software or your filesystem to remove certain attack points. Turning off unnecessary services, having a strong password, running as a user with limited rights, removing unneeded software, removing write priviledges on files that may be targeted, prohibiting your email software from downloading certain attachments, and running software that creates fewer security holes is all part of innoculating your machine. A machine that is well innoculated can be exposed to what would otherwise be a successful attack but not be harmed by it since the attack couldn't access or modify what it needed to.

The fourth and final line of defense is the third-party security software that you use to protect your machine against the remaining attack possibilities. There are many types of software to employ in this area: inbound/outbound firewalls, antivirus software, active antispyware scanners, browser plugins, email filtering, etc. All the previous lines of defense were designed and are used to guard against known threats. This line of defense adds some protection against known threats and also attempts to spot new threats as they occur and stop them from violating the computer's security.

As I hope you can see, each layer of security is not just important, it is necessary in order to provide maximum protection for your system. I consider my router's NAT, SPI, and firewall security to be the most important part of securing my system from attack.

Now that I've covered all of that, I need to inform you that you are getting NAT errors not because your router has a problem; rather, it is because your router is doing it's job. You are receiving a NAT error because the router is blocking access to your system, which is a good thing. In order to get rid of the NAT errors, you just need to forward some ports so that your applications are happy. To get more information on port forwarding, go to PortForward.com. They have excellent tutorials that will tell you how to configure your specfic router to forward ports for many, many different specific applications.

[Gizmo78]

Always good to get an expert oppinion, before going in to the unknown. :) Offcourse it wasn't the answer I was hoping for, but thank you all the same.

The thing is that it really bugs me when using Torrent-programs. So much that I am thinking of buying a new router instead. I have been trying to configure it for a while now. I is so not userfriendly. Can you recommend any other router, that might be better. something where I can allow access for a specific program on some specific ports to and from all IP's. There is no way to do that on the SMC 7204BRA, and I say that after trying out all options on Portforward.com

The thing is that I find all kinds of crap on my even though I have all that protection. It seems to me that the NAT isn't doing much good at all. PeerGuardian on the other hand cuts of all connection to and from malware programs. In fact I have to disable it when doing sweeps, if the Antivirus programs are to detect dialers and malware that tries to redirect etc. Also spywareBlaster blocks alot of websites. I can't remember the last time I have been redirected anywhere I wasn't suppose to go. Those programs make me feel safe. The NAT doesn't.

Is there any reading material on the possitive effects of NAT-firewalling, because it seems that all the nasties find their way through

In fact, yesterday I had my first real problem, not removing the malware, but some change it has made on my setup has me riddled. I have no clue as on how to fix it, cause I don't know what to fix. If you have any idea what the problem might be, any help or suggestions would be nice. Link included below.

http://www.daniweb.com/techtalkforums/thread37668.html