Hey there folks,
I’m trying to figure out how to configure my UFW, and I’m just not sure where to start. What can I do to see the intetnet traffic from individual apps so I can know what I might want to block? This is just my personal computer and I’m a total newbie to configuring firewalls so I’m just not sure how to go about it. Most online guides seem to assume one already knows what they want to block but I don’t even know how/where to monitor local traffic to figure out what I can/should consider blocking.
You know enough to be dangerous…
Why would an ISP assign a public IP to a users device? That wouldn’t make any sense. IPs are rare and expensive so that wouldn’t waste it on you. Each customer gets one IP and that is shared for all devices via NAT.
What your describing doesn’t make any sense
You’re right, it doesn’t make any sense. And it didn’t make any sense at the time either. After setting up the router with a laptop, I moved the connection to the firewall but it refused to connect. When I finally got ahold of tech support they said the connection locks into the first machine that logs in and they had to release it so I could connect the new machine. And just like that the firewall was given a routable IP address and connected to the internet. Stupidest thing I ever heard of, but that’s how they were set up. Now this was around 15+ years ago and I would certainly hope nobody is doing that crap today, but apparently that was their brilliant method of limiting how many devices could get online at once.