A second line of defense is probably a good idea if you use WiFi. There is nothing worth stealing on my computers, no credit card numbers, banking information, etc. The worst a cracker scumbag can do is erase a lot of hard work but I keep backups. If one's work requires keeping sensitive info on the disk then a second line of defense is probably a good idea, especially with WiFi.

Differences between NAT and NAT able is beyond my expertise. Do you mean NAT table (no sarcasm intended)? I seem to recall reading of software that executes on a computer (not in a router) that makes the computer act as a NAT router. I imagine such software might rely on a lookup table (NAT table) to perform address translations but I am only guessing when I should be Googling.

On another security issue you mentioned months ago.... your desire to disconnect the modem while traveling and the necessity of caching a week worth of WUs. Windows' Device Manager allows disabling and re-enabling the NIC without rebooting. What if there were a software that would enable the NIC between 1 PM and 2 PM (for example) and then disable it? We can already configure BOINC preferences to cause BOINC to contact the server only between certain hours. Using such a software and BOINC configuration you could crunch securely in absentia with only a 1 day cache and never miss a deadline. I imagine enabling/disabling the NIC is only a matter of altering a few registry keys but I have no idea which key(s) needs altering. If I knew which key(s) to alter I could write the software. Would you find it useful?

Thanks for the offer Dagorath...weighing the options as the physical stat is, that the WIFI router is not connected per se to any computer.....sits at the other end of the house in a cupboard. Presently, throwing the router powers switch and the pulling of the USB Wifi dongle is what i do....back in, the thing on power-up connects in about 45 seconds. Automating this is 2 part.

1. The router needs to be taken off the internet. That can be established by a simple command from the PC, but the command sits behind log on/strong password. Effectively, the series of commands could be send by a scheduler to say dis-connect. The whole thing solvable with a 2.5 Euro timer to do the simple on / off minimizing saving power consumption too.

2. the NIC also needs to be taken off the air as the PC otherwise would still be transmitting a signal....the PC connects to a fixed router IP, thus not difficult to discover.....which gets us to your very useful idea.

Probably send from the scheduler an install of a reg key alteration ( 0 and 1 ), but it requires confirmations and the firewall and or the antivir to be convinced to permit. Maybe with Sysinternals RegMon, one could find out which key is being changed when manually switching the connection on and off.

As byproduct of some Clusty reading, found a way to switch off the irritating pop-up notification that the connection is up or down....never disappearing until you mouse it. Main search gave this key {4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002bE10318} and indeed found all the settings for the WIFI NIC and there are many, one of them being radio on / radio off. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002bE10318}\0015\NDI\params\Radio\enum

BOINC is set already to connect for an hour daily to send results and pull a new batch to top up....that works fine....the speed limitation setting in the profile is bogus...still takes all it can when sending / receiving files.

...stumbling to ecstasy......to be continued, whilst BOINC is happy as a clam with the newly gained Firewall co-existence.

ciao ciao