I've installed NTL broadband this evening which uses an ethernet card to connect my PC to my set to cable box. After much frustration I realised that it was my McAfee firewall that was preventing connection.

The log was showing UDP blocking so I disabled UDP in & out on Port 53 and now it seems to work OK.

The trouble is that I've got no idea what I've actually done or what I am now exposed to.

Can anyone help ?

No doubt someone will correct me if Im wrong, but all you have done is enable the use of DNS.

If you dont understand that, it means you can type www.domain.co.uk rather than an IP address.

Don't worry about it.

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Mike

Yep UDP Port 53 is DNS lookups. Perfectly normal and safe to allow through your firewall.

Deano

Yep OK to allow 53 out and established connections back in, but not 53 in/out. Though a windows based PC would do bu66er all with incoming 53 UDP, more of a DMZ internal DNS server type of thing/rule.

rich

great - thanks guys.

Just discovered this great site for testing your security.

Everyone should try Shields Up to see how good your defenses are !

ShieldsUp is useful but when you start reading around, you seem to find as many people critising Steve Gibson as people offering good comments.

Here have another firewall related site.

H