DSL firewall built in external modem?

I just got dsl from bellsouth, the guy told me that it has a built in firewall somewhere, I guess in the external modem that I got. I am wondering how good is this stuff? I use ME till I can buy another computer and my pc is pretty slow.

Scott

[INTOXSICKATED]

it's a hardware firewall that you have which offers good protection against inbound attacks. a software firewall will compliment it nicely and offer you more protection against outbound attacks and give you more control over applications running on your computer. you can check out this thread for a list of free firewalls.

[INTOXSICKATED]

you can also check out black viper's site for some tips on speeding up and tweaking windows me.

[Oleg]

I got Westell 6100 from bellsouth it's great modem

[Diver]

The term outbound attacks is rather vague. A software firewall can do various things to improve security. It can maintain a list of applications authorized to communicate over the internet in the hope that if your computer gets infected with a trojan, that somehow was missed by your antivirus program, you will finally know your system is hosed, hopefully before the keylogger in it has time to send your banking log on to someone in Russia. This may consist of simple application controls, or more complex ones that prevent the trojan from impersonating an application that is authorized to communicate.

I also have the westell modem from bellsould, I installed Zonealarm free on my pc today and it isn't bad.

Scott

Thanks for the replies.

[no13]

try the router manual.
SMC's manual helped me out when I was screwing with the tests @ PCFlank and any s/w firewall config change wouldn't help!