These notes are specific to the LinkSys firewall router BEFSX41. For other firewall routers, please see the associated vendor documentation. For BEFSX41, the complete user guide is located at ftp://ftp.linksys.com/pdf/befsx41ug.pdf .

Go through the following steps to set up the firewall router on your VMWare machine:

1. Connect the router between your machine and the LAN. To do this, connect one end of an Ethernet cable to one of the LAN ports(labeled 1,2,3 or 4/DMZ) on the back of the router and the other end to your machine’s network port. Now, connect your WAN/LAN cable to the port marked ‘WAN’ on the router. Make sure the router is powered off during this step.

2. Now, power the router on. You should see it go through a diagnostic phase for a few seconds(watch the LEDs on the router).

3. Configure your PC to obtain an IP address automatically(DHCP). To do this on Windows XP, go to Control Panel> Network And Internet Connections>Network Connections>Local Area Connection, click on the Properties button, select TCP/IP and click on the Properties button, and then select Obtain an IP Address Automatically . Click OK until you get back to where you started out from, and then restart the system to complete the configuration.

4. Open a web browser and type in http://192.168.1.1 . You should see a screen prompting you for a username and password. admin is the default username and password. You can set this to something else after you log in the first time.

5. The default configuration of the router should work fine. If not, you might have to tweak the parameters in the SetUp tab. Look at the router documentation on how to do this. You can always use the Help tab to go to the latest documentation for the product on LinkSys’ website.

6. We will let you explore what all the options in each of the tabs do for the firewall.

7. For port forwarding, click on the Forwarding tab(Note: Before you use forwarding, you will have to disable the DHCP function in the DHCP tab). For adding a service, enter the name of your application, the range of external port(s) used by the server, the IP address of the server you want the Internet users to access under the appropriate text boxes. Check the Enable checkbox and then click Apply to enable this service. We did this so that Internet users could connect to our SSH port(port 22) through the firewall. The firewall should block any requests that are not enabled.

Note: This is a very brief exposition on the firewall’s capabilities. Please see the complete documentation on how each option can be used.