What are firewalls & ipconfig?

A firewall is a network security device that monitors incoming and outgoing network traffic and permits or blocks data packets based on a set of security rules. Its purpose is to establish a barrier between your internal network and incoming traffic from external sources (such as the internet) in order to block malicious traffic like viruses and hackers.

ifconfig is a system administration utility in Unix-like operating systems for network interface configuration. The utility is a command line interface tool and is also used in the system startup scripts of many operating systems. It has features for configuring, controlling, and querying TCP/IP network interface parameters. Ifconfig originally appeared in 4.2BSD as part of the BSD TCP/IP suite.

o an