Controlling Network Traffic

Abstract

Any computer—and more to the point, a Mac OS X Server—receives a barrage of traffic over the network interfaces. You can use two services in particular to control this traffic. The first is the router, and the second is the firewall. A router is a device on your network that chooses the paths between devices that network traffic takes; in short, a router connects networks and then manages the logic of how data is sent between them. A firewall, on the other hand, controls the various types of data that are allowed to communicate over those paths. In many cases, a firewall and a router are one device, although they can be two separate devices. This chapter first covers setting up the server as a router and then covers leveraging the firewall to restrict access to the server.