Member Avatar for jackthechemist

Greetings,

I have some questions regarding my router's configuration settings. I have a Linksys broadband-N wireless router.

First, I'm connecting via DHCP, so I'm not specifying any IPs, and have always used the default DNS server(s) (sometimes ipconfig shows more than one DNS server from shaw) that I get from shaw, my ISP, but I noticed that you can specify DNSs in the router config. Should I be doing this? Can I improve speed/security by specifying a 'good' DNS? Are there some sites that I cannot access because my default DNSs don't know how to translate the host name? Some clarification would be great.

Second, I understand the MAC clone feature, but can't see why I would want to use it. My modem MAC is registered with my ISP but I don't think my computer's or router's MAC are. But if I can connect just fine the way things are, why would I want my router to appear to have the MAC of my computer? Once again, with regards to security, how does the MAC clone feature pertain?

Also, if my computer is server a website, is it really necessary to enable the DDNS setting on my router? Can't I just run the server and make sure the ports are open? Should I have DDNS enabled? (I'm not serving yet, but will be soon ^^)

I've set my router to allow java and activeX (of course! :P) but filter cookies, and am wondering if I should activate the proxy web server filter as well. This would deny me access to any WAN proxy server, but could someone elucidate how this might affect torrent traffic and connection to distributed networks (e.g. TorNet)?

Similarly, I can disable IPSec, PPTP, and L2TP tunnel connections (independently of course). Can anyone think of any common services that use these protocols that might make me want to let them through?

Finally I had the option to set the web utility access (config access via the browser) to use HTTP or HTTPS and switched it to HTTPS, but then firefox got upset and didn't trust the certificate. Now I think it is fine so I added it as a security exception as I know that the 'sever' at 192.168.1.1 is just my router but that sort of freaked me out, is this okay? I thought HTTPS was more secure? Should I put it back to HTTP only?

Hopefully this has tested/quized your router/security knowledge! :P Thanks again in advance for your comments/advice/answers/options/for all the fish. FYI I am rapidly trying to figure this out on my own, but any hints would be most helpful^^

Jack

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Member Avatar for freshfitz

The router needs to have a public dns to serve the webpages either set your isp's or a public, your internal network can use your routers ip as dns.

If your isp changes your public ip then you will need ddns setup to serve the website if your isp changes your ip address you will have to manually update that with your registrar and it takes 24 hours to populate through the internet. MAC cloning you don't use so ignore that and I would firewall the vpn connections if you are not using them

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