Findproxy

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.

To verify if you have internet security problems, here are some web sites that check your computer and provide different levels of reports:

Symantec Security Check (Once on the page, click Start under "Security Scan".)
http://security.symantec.com

Gibson Research Corporation (On the page, scroll down, and click ShieldsUP!)
http://www.grc.com

Sygate Online Services (On the page, click Scan Now.)
http://scan.sygate.com