[johnwill]

That's a perfect illustration of why you have a firewall, virus scanners, spyware scanners, etc. Welcome to the wild west on the Internet.

It's normal for people to seek out unprotected computers, happens all the time.

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."

 

[johnwill]

If the firewall is killing the Internet, you have something configured wrong, since that's not the idea behind a firewall!

Since you have a router, and you haven't opened any incoming ports, you should be pretty safe from outside threats. I'm not sure what is going on with your Norton Firewall, I don't use it. I installed Norton Internet Security once, but it was a resource hog, and setup was more complex than necessary.

My advice with kids is to give them their own computer, and make an image backup of it before you turn it over to them. When it goes down the drain with whatever they manage to do to it, restore the image backup and they start again!

 

[johnwill]

I'd seriously consider a broadband router, that way you don't need to have a "host" computer. You can have as much protection for your computer as you like, independent of what happens to their computers.

You mention a router in your first message, so I'm somewhat confused about your use of a "host" computer.

 

[johnwill]

OK, now for the stupid question. Why not connect all the computers directly to the router? What is the point of connecting them through your system?