Every minute, billions of words and letters worth of information flow back and forth across the internet, unaware of the threats of interception, manipulation, and removal. To cope with these threats, we have created the “Firewall” which, as the Oxford American English Dictionary defines it, is “a part of a computer system or network that is designed to block unauthorized access while permitting outward communication,” (504). The firewall, in reality, is much more than that; it is our sentry eternally vigilant over the information that moves the world’s business. It is our metallic legion, soldiers of a famed border guard charged with the protection of the ethereal, a space we never see that exists in theory upon lines of copper and glass.

The firewall, when glimpsed by a guest bolted in its rack, is outwardly disguised in its boxy shell, bolted into a metal rack, standing guard. Light Emitting Diodes of red, yellow, and green, forever blink without vision, staring upon the world’s scene of wires, cables, equipment, and the darkness of a cooled closet. Fierce without claw, hungry without bite, in the lightning-fast brain hidden within lies the intelligence and danger of the firewall. Two thick cables, like feed hoses to an animal’s mouth serve information directly to its silicon veins, infusing an eternal feed of zeros and ones into the microchip brain that lies nondescript within its quiet box.

The brain hums with electric charge fusing data into information to be processed and searched for the slightest sign of malignant intent. The knives and bullets of today’s age of information must me sorted out, detected and blocked from within a pile of garbage millions of lines in length. It is the job of the firewall to accomplish this task, to interpret the lines of ones and zeroes to form emails, web pages, file transfers, messages, stock quotes and anything else that anyone might want. Within these suitcases of knowledge hide the ceramic pistol of malignant code awaiting the appointed time to wreak havoc on those who would unlock the case, exposing its deadly contents to the entire world. Like the X-ray of the airport scanners, the firewall searches, seeking out within its brain these hidden messages at a rate that no human could master. What the brain allows to continue is passed along a spine of nerves, aluminum and silicon, to eventually make its exit upon the world, safe to be read or looked at by the eyes of humans, certified and recognized by our silent sentry.

The firewall is our never seen bulletproof vest, protecting our computers interfering in nothing, hurting no one. Yet others scan it, jam it, poke it, try to find their way around it, seeking ever to cause us harm, to strike us where our sentry does not watch, to sneak in when the sentry does not hear. The firewall does not care; it is loyal and unable to comprehend anything else. A path for patrol has been laid bare for the feet of the sentry to follow, forever watching for that next attack, the next intruder, the next thief. The firewall lays roadblocks without orders, commanding and following its own orders even as those who would hurt our information march against it.

As Building Internet Firewalls notes in their second edition text, “The Internet is a marvelous technological advance that provides access to information, and the ability to publish information, in revolutionary ways. But its also a major danger that provides the ability to pollute and destroy information in revolutionary ways,” (3). Unfortunately, as we move towards the future, hackers and those who would harm information on the internet are becoming more skilled in their profession and the Firewall, once an unknown sentry, is rapidly becoming our front line soldier, being forced to cope with ever increasing demands that degenerative elements of society would place on it. As ever, our deceptively simple-looking box will be there to protect us and our privacy online but there is know way to know just how hard it will have to work to do so. The future will no doubt bring firewalls that are faster, more dynamic, and far stronger than those of today but there is no perfect solution, and we will have to just trust our sentry as he keeps plugging away.

Works Cited

Lindberg, Christine A., ed. The Oxford American College Dictionary. New York: G.P. Putnam Sons, 2002.

Zwicky, Elizabeth D., Et Al. Building Internet Firewalls (2nd Edition). New York: O’Reil