What is FIREWALL?

It closes off communication ports so they can not be accessed by computers on a particular side of the firewall. In the case of a personal firewall it would be any port requests from any computer other than the one you are on (technically the firewall can also close down internal ports as well)

An example of a port would be the TCP port 80 to which all insecure web requests are made. If you have a webserver on your computer, but the firewall is does not let that port communicate, then people would not be able to see the web pages there.
 
In general, it determines what kind of data can be transmiited and received from your computer.

I.E. You hear a knock at the door. If it's a friend, let him in, otherwise keep the doors locked.
 

Firewall is an program that controls communication between your PC and the rest of the world.

And u, the boss, u allow or deny what goes in and out.

It is automatically configured not to allow the bad guys to get in : )

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