Printer sharing and Security

M

macavenger

Registered
I have four computers networked in my house, three on Airport and one on Ethernet, all sharing a single printer using Mac OS X's built in printer sharing. The printer is connected to one of the Airport computers. The whole network is connected to the internet via a cable modem. The Airport Base Station is a Graphite model, so it does not have separate WAN and LAN ports. Both the ethernet connected computer and the Cable modem are connected into the base-station via a small hub.

The last time I had the network configured this way, I had some problems with the printer being accessible to everyone on the Cable Modem network, and not just to the people on my internal network, which is of course a problem. I was able to somewhat solve this by turning off the Airport to ethernet bridging option on the Airport base-station, but this, of course, also made it so the ethernet connected printer could neither print nor access the other computers. Is there some way to protect the network from outside access via the cable modem, while still allowing the ethernet connected computer access? I don't need anything fancy (it's not as though we have anything we need to hide or the like :) ), just something so people can't just print to our printer and waste our ink at will. Thanks!
 
u need a firewall. or...

a simple way to do this is:

• get a router!

• connect the modem to the router, there is a special port for this (WAN).

• connect the other computer(s) to the other ports on the router and the base station as well.

• your router is an automatic barrier between ur network and the WAN.

• now if u want ur webserver and stuff to work u need to "forward" the incomming requests to the ip/port of that computer. if no forwarding rule is declared, the request can't be forwarded.

it's pretty safe. you can block ports on the router as well (depending on the router u have), thus having a firewall setup.
 
unless it is super old you cable modem is already a firewall. Now they are all different but you just need to get out the owner's manual for the modem and make sure that all incomming connection are blocked and that it is not in bridging mode.

-Eric
 
I'll have to look into te info for the cable modem. If there is any way to configure it, I am unaware of it. Thanks!
 
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