Hi:
Concerning NIS 2011, I was able to find some previous posts about "network trust levels" that help me a bit, but I still need a little clarification for *peace of mind.* I'm wanting to be sure I have the tightest security on my network--single PC with no sharing of files of resources/devices. When I first started NIS, I looked at the firewall entries in the history log. It discovered two things--a loopback connection 127.0.0.1 (that it called a local subnet or something like that), and another entry discovered the MAC address of my router. For both of those entries it assigned "protected" and on that entry said no further action was needed. But if I click on "details" to read more about the entries, on that second page there are two buttons--Trust or Restrict. I left them alone since it said I was "protected"--I certainly don't need "trust", and I didn't know what would happen if I chose "restricted" (although the paragraph there said I'd still be able to email, browse the Web, etc. I then looked at Network Security Map. It said my network was secure, and it discovered my PC under "local area network". It doesn't show any devices in the "trusted category" which suits me. It doesn't mention my router at all.
So my question is in four parts:
1) Is "protected" the right selection to leave for both the 127.0.0.1 subnet and the router address?
2) What would happen if either or both were assigned "restricted"?
3) Why does it use the MAC address of the router instead of its network (LAN) IP address? I guess one thing that confuses me is that nowhere does NIS show the actual full numerical address range/subnet mask of my private network that it's picking up--at least that I've seen anywhere yet.
4) And finally, should the router show up anywhere on the Network Security Map (it doesn't)--I realize devices can be "added", but is there any reason to do that in this circumstance? Thanks a lot!