Firewall

A firewall is a secure and trusted hardware/software application which is used to block unwanted logical ports and manage unwanted traffic. In simple words firewall is a barrier to keep destructive forces away from your server which may be loading your server. A firewall is useful if you don’t want eternal users to access a particular host or service.
It is useful to filter packets based on source’s IP address. Its securing your data and server from being hacked.

You can consider firewall as a program or a device which can monitor, control all data transfer between any internal network with whole internet, A firewall ensures that all data communication in both directions is accordingly to security rules set.
Firewall technologies are configurable thus you can limit communication by direction, IP address, protocol, ports, or numerous other combination. There can be communication failure if data communication is not as per the rule set for all outgoing and incoming requests. If you have access to the firewall of you server , you can configure it to enable the ports, protocols, and addresses that may optimize data communication.
As for security reasons you can configure your firewall to allow only TCP traffic which may cause the user to see frequent buffering of clips.

Desktop Firewall :
Allmost all operating system have built-in firewall applications which is responsible for protecting standalone machine, This type of firewall is designed to protect a single desktop computer and is of a great protection mechanism if the network firewall is compromised.

Software Firewall :
As the name suggest it’s a software application which can be installed on a server which is capable of preventing unwanted data communication. Many webmaster don’t prefer software firewall as most secure. This type of firewall is often used as an application firewall which means that the firewall is optimized to protect applications such as web application and email servers. All Software firewalls have built-in complex filters to inspect the content of the network traffic. This type of firewall is usually behind hardware firewalls.

Hardware Firewall :
A hardware firewall is a dedicated hardware device which is installed on your system/server. These firewalls consist of network routers with additional firewall capabilities. Usually hardware firewalls are designed to handle heavy network traffic sites. Hardware firewalls are often placed on the perimeter of the network to filter the internet noise and only allow pre-determined traffic into the network.

Usually hardware firewalls are used in conjunction with software firewalls. Hardware firewall filters out the traffic and the software firewall inspects the network traffic so we get pure traffic and the unwanted traffic can be blocked easily. If in case hardware firewalls are bombarded with bogus network traffic her comes the role of hardware firewall they drop this unwanted traffic and will only let in the right traffic for your network/server. Hardware firewall not only protects the software firewall but also allows the software firewall to inspect proper network traffic. Hardware and software firewall combination will surely optimizes the network throughput.