Help please

[James Linder]

> On 17 Nov 2018, at 8:00 pm, macports-users-request at lists.macports.org wrote:
> 
>> The problem is definately the modem. I turned OFF the firewall (actually 
>> I need to think thru, why would the modem have a firewall at all, unless 
>> bad guys can login to the modem …) and rsync ran perfectly. I tried but 
>> was not able to make a modem firewall rule for rsync. So turn off 
>> firewall, selfupdate, turn on is pretty painless.
> 
> Again, as an Aussie NBN user I have had zero problems with it, and I 
> didn't have to do anything special (other than port-redirects to my 
> FreeBSD server).  You are with T$, aren't you, with the Fast 5355 router?
> 
> And yes, you *do* need the firewall enabled, to at least "Medium" i.e. 
> inbound traffic only in response to outbound traffic, and block everything 
> below NetBIOS.
> 
> You do have remote access disabled, don't you?  And even then, T$ can 
> "upgrade" your firmware in the middle of the night, and the first you know 
> about it is when the Mac has dropped the WiFi connection and failed to 
> restart (you need to disable/enable it, and hope that it gloms onto the 
> right service).

My motivation in continuing this thread is that unless macports users are rare in Aussie (how sad that would be) then other macport users are certain to have the magic big T$ modem. (T$ is joke reference to Telstra)
I do not use the modem wifi, apple do not play nice with furren AC modems (my tests are 5Mb / sec close to a tp link and 35Mb to an airport using my macbook)
Dave I do not understand your 
> And yes, you *do* need the firewall enabled

Any out going packet will be NAT’d and allowed back
Any intruding packet will not be NAT’d and dumped by the router.
There is no pathway from the internet to any of mymachine unless the packet is ESTABLISHED, RELATED

The best answer that I can find is that if you have and infected machine the firewall prevents it calling other machines.
Well my network is linux and mac machines only, so I guess that is of little concern

James