My partner and I are in Geneva and have Swisscom telephone and internet service, which was set up by her employer before we got here. We have been provided with a hard-wired router and we want to upgrade to wireless.

From the Swisscom website, it appears to me that the routers Swisscom sells itself do NOT have a built-in firewall, and I would prefer to have one that does. I have been looking for one online, but I don't see any that support VDSL.

Does anyone know if -- and if so where -- I can get a wireless VDSL router with built-in firewall that I can use with Swisscom service?

Thanks in advance for any help!

See the following link from Swisscom in English:

http://www.swisscom.ch/res/internet/...?languageId=en

Thanks anyway, Paul, but I'd really rather have a firewall built in to the router rather than a subscription service.

What do you exactly expect of a Firewall ?

The router box provided by Swisscom will do network address translation (NAT) to allow several computers to share the internet access, and will by default block all incoming connections unless you specifically map a port to an internal IP address.

Alain, your question may need to be "dumbed down" a bit for me! I'm just looking for security. E.g., when I buy something online with a credit card I don't want anyone else to be able to see the number, and I don't want anyone not in my household to be able to connect to the internet via my internet connection without my permission.

If you're saying that the Swisscom routers offer this protection already, that obviously would be good to know.

Thanks.

Dusty, when you buy something online it is done with a secure server, heavily encrypted to the eyeballs... no-one sees your credit card number.

However I highly reccommend the Linksys WRT54G2 Wireless G router as seen here http://www.linksysbycisco.com/US/en/products/WRT54G2 that can be bought from Media Markt relatively cheap at around 70 CHF.

Great all-rounder, ridiculously easy to set up, with the hardware firewall and decent security that you are looking for. Plus it's slim and discreet, which is always nice. I have one and it started out as a "stop-gap", ended up as a permanent fixture.

When you setup a wireless connection you have an option to make it encrypted or not. The default setting would almost certainly be no encryption. You can read all about wireless encryption on this page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_Protected_Access

It is not difficult to setup. Best bet is to get a wireless/router from the cisco company linksys. There is already a recommendation I believe.

I could help you set it up, but since I am in Zug it is a little far to travel to Geneva...

As other posters explained a firewall won't ensure that kind of security. Nor will it ensure that you don't download viruses or that some kind of bug in an application running on your computer isn't making you vulnerable.

My recommendation would be to just go with the router provided by Swisscom, it is a good product that provides more than enough on the security front.

If you are really concerned about security I'd suggest you have a look at your computer first, what kind of operating system you are running (either Mac OS X or Windows 7 are good choices), what kind of applications you are downloading from the internet (you should keep that to a minimum and always from reputable places), what kind of antivirus and anti spyware you are running, and also, make sure that all your software is always up to date.

Richdog, I had seen this one online and liked the look of it, but the description makes no mention of "VDSL." Is it compatible?

Thanks!

I think that if you go with Swisscom's VDSL (Infinity) service you're kinda obligated to use their modem/router.

Ahhhh VDSL... I didn't even notice that... in facrt it's the first time i've ever heard of it. Odd.

Well, looking at the Swisscom website I can't see anything about a specialist router (unless im missing something)...

VDSL and ADSL are not the same. Search for VDSL and linksys routers.

Two advantages of using a router with wireless.

1/ If you have more then one PC then you can share the connection, the wireless router issuing IP addresses using DHCP. (Max perhaps 3).
2/ If you use a router then you can use a private IP address range for your PC, a non routable (internet point of view) one like 192.168.1.x.

Hello. Ring up swisscom and get the router they recommend (or give you). I have the one they send with the package also. To the level you will use it it will provide the same security as one you can buy at mediamart or wherever and more importantly Swisscom will support you if you have problems with it and they even upgrade it remotely as required.

If you buy one at an external shop then if you have problems with your internet connection you will end up in a mess because swisscom may not help you fix a problem with a router that is not on their preferred list.

For the security stuff, as Alain said, your not going to do any better with a different one from the swisscom supplied model.

But if he gets a basic modem with the subscription, can he not then use a Linksys router to provide the wireless etc? I did some quick googling and it appears people are using VDSL and Linksys routers together. I'm not 100% sure on that, but good luck to the OP either way.

Somebody correct me if I am wrong here, but the sort of boxes swisscom or sunrise whomever supply connect to the USB port. I have an unused sunrise ADSL starter kit that is just that.

You can get wireless devices that connect to USB port, but that is not what you want for this. You need a port on a wireless device that you can plug a USB into.

Simple go for a VDSL linksys router with wireless capabilities. Strongly disagree with the previous statement that this would not improve your security.

Alot of viruses install backdoors on PCs when they manage to find their way in, be it through an attachment or a web page. Backdoors that remain there even after the virus is spotted and deleted. Sure some virus packages close these doors too, but it not so easy to do so cause it is difficult to tell how a PC was configured in the first place for the virus software.

If you move your principle security layer to a router then the problem is greatly simplified. If you running windows I would also recommend installing something like WinPatrol which keeps tags on your OS configuration, warning you if changes are made.

Hi Mark, perhaps the package being discussed is different to the one we got, but Swisscom provided us with a wireless router which is a normal wireless router, i.e. 4 lan ports and 54g wireless, with a seection of recent security protocols possible for your choice of wireless encryption. No USB connection to the computer. Therefore the attack would have to be a router compromise and I am not a security wiz but I think its reasonable to say the swisscom one is likely to be as reliable against such an attack as the Linksys one.

OS Security is a different matter obviously, but this is just the router device I thought in this discussion.

Mike

Mike,
The key question relates to IP address & firewalls. If you can open a dos window, type ipconfig and see the IP address that swisscom has issued you then you are I fear essentially connected directly to the internet. If there is some form of routing going on then you are in a slightly better position. Ideally as already mentioned if you have a firewall on the router itself then you are far better off when it comes to secondary infections from a virus/backdoors.

Yes agreed. I better talk from our experience only I think - our one is the swisscom 20mb service, we got a wireless router with 4 ports and the router does port basic firewall functions you would expect like blocking inbound traffic that didnt intitiate from the local lan and the address translation mentioned by Mark, so you dont have an "internet" address on your PC you have an internal address. the only way to see the internet facing address is to log into your router via a browser.

As it seems there may be different implementations out there it might be better to ask swisscom how they work it for your package but ours is what I would expect from a home adsl connection.

It's possible - I have the Swisscom VDSL modem with WiFi and have connected my Apple Extreme wifi base station to it

Then I can set up 2 networks - one as Wifi up to G standard and then on the apple router up to N standard (faster wifi) - best of both worlds.

Jase

why not just get an access point instead of router? The access point you just plugin to your existing router, configure it with your desired level of encryption and you are good to go. (unless you don't like having 2 devices)