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Firewalling for the McAfee Security Center






 

Before we can open ports for Ares, we need to figure out what ports ares is using. Here is a brief walkthrough on how to do that.



Open up Ares. Then click the Control Panel icon in the toolbar at the top of your screen.



You should see a bunch of tabs close to the top of this window. One of these tabs should be labeled Transfer. Go ahead and click it now.



Enter the port you want Ares to use into the Accept incoming connections on port box. By default this port is set to 1157. You can change it to whatever you like, or leave it set to 1157.

Please enter the port you chose for Ares below.

Ares' Port




Open up the McAfee Security Center. Then click Internet & Network which is located right in the middle of that window.


To the right of the Internet & Network area click the configure link.


Click the Firewall protection is enabled bar on the right side of this window.


Now click the Advanced button in the Firewall protection is enabled panel.


By default McAfee allows all traffic in and out of your computer for the programs it thinks are okay. I prefer to have McAfee tell me which programs it is allowing traffic for before it does it. So I have set the security level to Tight. I would recomind that you do the same. I have also disabled the Smart Recomindations option. The "smart" recomindation is to only allow the programs you need and use to connect the internet. Relying upon McAfee to guess which programs those are wouldn't be very smart. If you made the changes above, you would see something like the following screen pop up when you opened a newly installed program.


Go ahead and hit Apply if you have made any changes here. Then click the Program Permissions link in the menu on the left hand side of the window.


Find Ares in the Program Permissions list and click it to highlight it. McAfee does not allow you to determine exactly which ports Ares uses. So you've got a couple choices here. You can Grant Full Access, which allows all traffic in and out of your computer to this program. You should only use that option when Ares is acting as a server. You can Grant Outbound-Only Access which allows Ares to connect to the internet, but does not allow the internet to connect to Ares. The other choice is to prevent Ares from connecting to the internet by clicking the Block Access Option. All of these actions are provided in a list at the lower right of your screen. When you are done click the Ok button all the way back to the main menu.