alt Hacker NewsNATs are also firewalls. I think people forget that before NATs, when you would install Windows, the minute you connected it to the internet, you had to rush to update it before a virus would infect it. The OS of the 90s weren't secure enough to be exposed to the WAN.
Replies
icedchai • yesterday at 9:01 PM
Windows wasn't secure enough.
I ran Linux, *BSD, and Solaris systems for years without any firewalls, host or otherwise.
NATs are not firewalls. Any firewall-like functionality provided by NAT is entirely accidental and better provides by an actual NAT.