Does NAT imply a firewall, yes or no?

[cow]

I'm currently using a USB ADSL modem, but I'm shopping around for a router to replace it with. Now I've seen routers advertised supporting NAT, but no specific mention made of a firewall. Then I've also seen routers advertised as specifically having a built-in firewall. Obviously NAT implies a "basic" firewall as it hides the pc's on the lan, but is this good enough protection, or should I go for a router that's specifically advertised as having firewall functionality?

Regards

 

[Solar]

NAT = Hidden PCs. The only machine accessibly from the internet is your adsl router. Thus, having NAT already completely protects your pcs from internet attacks. "Firewall" has become to much of a hype lately. The only place where you need a firewall, is one or more of your pcs physically have an IP address on the internet. That's the only way one can get DIRECT access to a pc. A Personal Firewall is typically for a home user with a modem plugged directly into his pc.. because this computer has an Internet address and is therefore vulnerable to attacks. Me myself has NEVER had a modem directly connected to my pc... the whole idea makes me sick... I use a computer for NAT, or use a NAT router to do the job.

So basically.. NAT completely protects you from incoming traffic.

 

[grubman]

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So basically.. NAT completely protects you from incoming traffic.
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but NAT does not protect the machine / device which is connected to the internet. NAT does hide your machines on your lan but don't be fooled into thinking that they can't be accessed, there are ways to do this. NAT, IMHO, does not imply firewall. All it does is translate addresses for your private IP's to the public IP.

 

[cow]

That's what I wanted to get to... So it's possible to get to the machines on the lan even if only the router has a publicly accessable ip address? Just out of curiosity, how would this be done??

Regards

 

[Andre]

NAT gives you private addresses for use on your LAN, typically in the 192.168.xxx.xx range. A NAT router has 2 IP addresses, one on the LAN side and your "real" IP address on the WAN (DSL) side.

The protection your PC's get is not complete though although it's better than nothing. Typically you won't see ports scans or the like since the router is getting them and usually drops the packets unless you've opened a port yourself for web or mail or whatever.

Many of the internet attacks out there won't work with a hardware NAT router since your router is not a PC.

 

[cow]

Makes sense, thanks guys!