EnhancedRuleset and secondly LNS & Wireless

I am a registered user of LNS and have a 2 questions regarding the EnhancesRuleSet.

a) The green ticks on the left against two rules in the ruleset (Block IP Packets with MF Flag Set and Block Fragmented IP Packets) are not ticked in the EnhancedRuleSet, and hence these rules are not applied.

Can you explain what these rules are for and if possible advise the circumstances in which the rules should be activated.

b) Secondly I would like to ask can LNS be used on a portable laptop that is connected to the net via a wireless connection?

I run a 1.4G 341 Meg ram, TDS3, BOClean, Nod32, LNS, Spybot, Proximotron, WormGuard and some of JavaCools beauties.

Thanks for the help

[Patrice]

Hi Looney!

You can apply the two rulesets! I'm not very good in technical stuff, but here is what I know so far about packets:

Flags: a sequence of three flags (one of the 4 bits is unused) used to control whether routers are allowed to fragment a packet (i.e. the Don't Fragment, DF, flag), and to indicate the parts of a packet to the receiver.

Fragmentation Offset: a byte count from the start of the original sent packet, set by any router which performs IP router fragmentation. The packet is broken down into smaller packets and must be reassembled afterwards.

When you do an online scanning test with PCFlank you can scan your machine with such protocols. What does this mean? If there's a good hacker, he searches the internet for computers with a port scanner. If he's good and he knows about security, he won't scan normally, because firewall and routers would block the signal and hide the computer. But if he sends Flag or Fragmented Packets, the router/firewall answers... That means the hacker knows that your computer isn't down! Now he would start to hack your computer. This is a possible scenario, if it's really done by hackers I don't know.

To b) yes it's possible to use Look'n'Stop on a portable laptop that is connected to the net via a wireless connection. The only thing you have to do is, that you choose the right network interface in your Options screen. But don't worry it will show you the wireless card (and this one you have to choose).

Best regards!

Patrice

P.S. I'm sure Frederic can answer your technical question far better than me!!

[Frederic]

Hi Looney,

Nothing else to add. Patrice's answer is correct.

The rules are not ticked by default because sometimes (depending on the Internet provider and/or the server to reach) the rules can block some packets whereas it should not.
So, just try them, and if you experience some connection problem, you will have to deactivate them again.

Frederic.

Patrice and Frederic,

Thanks very much for the plain English "nooby-speak" understandable explanation. I have seen the light.

Cheers

Looney

nb/Gotta run, two men in white coats coming.