NAT or SPI?

Hey team:
I just got the cable installed, and am configuring the lynksys befsr41. It supports SPI or NAT...
Which is more secure? What are you people doing?

Thanks

I have the same router and I have SPI enabled. NAT is only used to share one public IP with multiple private IP's. The private IP's are not visible to the outside world, thus, hiding your PC's. SPI, from my understanding, examines each packet and determines whether the data inside it is trustworthy (ie it examines both the source IP and destination IP) this helps in preventing DoS attacks.

I am still trying to learn more about it, so some of the info may be inaccurate, so anyone who has more accurate info please feel free to correct me. I just enabled it last night, and I noticed a difference in a certain file sharing program I use.

[quote]Originally posted by nytiger73:
<strong>I have the same router and I have SPI enabled. NAT is only used to share one public IP with multiple private IP's. The private IP's are not visible to the outside world, thus, hiding your PC's. SPI, from my understanding, examines each packet and determines whether the data inside it is trustworthy (ie it examines both the source IP and destination IP) this helps in preventing DoS attacks.

I am still trying to learn more about it, so some of the info may be inaccurate, so anyone who has more accurate info please feel free to correct me. I just enabled it last night, and I noticed a difference in a certain file sharing program I use.</strong><hr></blockquote>


SPI sounds more secure (though I admit I am only going on the info you have posted), but if you have heavy network traffic I'd suspect it would slow things down a bit.

My firewall acts as a NAT and It seems to have kept the wolves at bay far better than anything else I have ever run (blackice and zonealarm).

I have noticed that it does slow things down a tadbit. But so far I like the added security.

Thanks dudes. I am rolling w/ SPI and of course it doesn't seem slow at all since I just came off dial-up (shudder)...

Yep, I doubt you would notice a difference if you just came off dial up!