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Differences Between a $40 Router and a $300 Router
All routers and wireless routers are capable of being a firewall that will block most unsolicited incoming traffic. However, there is a huge difference between a $40 router or wireless router in the DLink, Netgear class verses the Sonic Wall and Watchguard class $300 router.
The $40 class router/firewall is helpless in protecting against attacks initiated from the inside of the network. In this case when a person visits a web site which installs software and in some cases the person is tricked into believing they are installing something helpful such as a PC-Tune Up or an Antivirus program.
Blocking incoming traffic with a $40 router helps protect against many types of attacks but prying eyes see in and malware gets installed often by simply browsing the net.
Although software antivirus and software firewalls (software are programs installed on the PC) are good ideas, they are not failsafe. These programs have to be told which programs to allow and which ones not to allow leaving it open for the person being tricked, once again, into thinking they are allowing a good program and in actuality end up allowing access to a malware-program. Such unwanted programs can use your PC as a spamming computer, copy files and data and email it off to recipients attempting to steal information such as banking sites used with passwords that you may have visited, credit card numbers, social security numbers, names, addresses, date of births, etc.
The other downside of depending on the software antivirus and software firewall is that these programs often break because of either, the bad guys (the people creating the malware software) write code that breaks them when that code is installed on the PC by visiting a web site; and secondly, when the good guys (the people making the anti-malware software) update their software. A hardware router – firewall is important to accommodate the software measures of protection since the software is prone to break.
Stage Center: the $300 Watchguard and SonicWall. These have settings in them to block much unwanted outgoing traffic (in addition to blocking the incoming traffic which the $40 router also does well at). This is important since malware can get installed by being initiated from the inside as described earlier. A large population of the bad guys initiates their attacks from Latin America and China and the $300 class firewalls have the ability to block entire continents by setting the IP addresses for those countries or continents in the router. Control can be set that allows only certain types of traffic such as web browsing or emailing on these routers. These routers also will download blacklists and whitelists and update themselves. These lists tell the router which sites are dangerous and which are safe.
To simplify, the $300 router has the capability (when configured properly) to block much of the outgoing traffic that becomes dangerous simply because the person is unaware that sites they visit have the ability to install unwanted and dangerous programs on their computers.
There has certainly been attempt of implementation on some of these features in the $40 class router; however all of my experiences with them found that they were not developed as usable features (bug free and glitchless). The fully executed implementations of these features in the $300 class routers have surpassed my expectations on every use.
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