Why buy/ install more than 1 copy

If you have only one computer capable of connecting to the web, all others of the lan connect thru the one.
Why should you need to install other copies on the lan.
Would not any thing trying to infect/misuse the lan have to alter one or more of the processes that the Guard is preventing from being altered on the gateway machine the Guard is installed on?

Mebe kinda dumb but is something been nagging at me for awhile now.

 

You would need PG on all computers for pretty much the same reason you would have a firewall on all computers in the LAN. The Gateway computer in this case is just the opening/path to the internet, like a router would be if all of your computers were connected to one. Anything malicious being delivered to one of your computers not running PG would be able to execute, because the virus/malware would never stop and execute on the PG protected computer.

 

Ok how is it supposed to get to the other machines if it can't get on the first one to begin with?

 

From what little I know about your LAN I an guessing that you are using Internet Connection Sharing (ICS). This works somewhat like a NAT (Network Address Translation) router, if you are not familiar with how this works see http://www.grc.com/nat/nat.htm. Simply put the ICS software sits between the internet and your LAN, on the internet side is your ISP provided IP address. While on the LAN side ICS provides each computer with a different IP address, one that is not routable/accessible from the internet. Microsoft's ICS uses 192.168.0.(1-255) with a subnet of 255.255.255.0. The internet connection on the LAN side of the computer sharing the internet connection (host) is assigned the IP of 192.168.0.1, and all other LAN computers (clients) are assigned the same IP but ending with 2-255. When a computer requests a web page that request goes through the ICS software and it makes a note of which computer, IP, made the request. Then when the page is sent back that is compared and routed to the computer that made the request. Therefore the host computer (192.168.0.1) does not open anything that it did not request. Instead the data is sent to the requesting computer and is processed there.

I hope this very simplified description of how ICS and NAT work has helped. As I was trying to say with the comparison to a firewall, the firewall/Appdefend only protects the computer on which it is running.

 

Ok I got it now. I fergot that it would just pass thru the gateway and wouldn't get opened or run until it reached the requesting IP. So none of the protections on the gateway would kick in because it wasn't actually on the gateway just passing thru.

In essence each unit of the lan would need its own security apps [AV,AT,etc]
so that they would protect each from what gets opened on each one.

Thanks for dusting off the cobwebs in the ole belfry.

 

You are welcome. I find my self in that position more and more lately, but attribute it to forgetting most of what I have learned.
(Senior moments)

Take care.