How can I close any ports of TCP|IP?

Answer 1

Interesting question. Why would you need to do that? A firewall will block access to the TCP/IP ports but, TCP/IP Filtering from within windows allows you to close the ports also. You need to make sure you close only the ports that are not needed. Some ports I vital to ensure proper operation for Windows others are just security holes.

Answer 2

Get a good firewall program like zonealarm and or a router with a firewall in it. The whole idea of a firewall is to block ports, but like was mentioned the trick is to which ports to leave open so that you can do things like browse the Internet.

A router with its firewall is good because it can block certain kinds of attacks, and it will change your IP to one that the outside can't see. As in the outside might see you as 68.2.24.3, but your real IP might be 192.168.2.2, and your router will block traffic that wasn't sent directly to you.

A software firewall is good because you can tell it to do restrictions by program. Like you can say that Internet Explorer should be allowed to access the Internet, but you can still block XXX game from accessing the internet, even though they would both want to use the same port. Also ZoneAlarm is smart enough to know if a program has changed and ask you again if that program should have access to the Internet. Like say you say it is OK for XXX to access the Internet, and then a virus comes in writes itself to XXX and hopes that you will run XXX and it will access the internet that way. Well ZoneAlarm will notice XXX is different and ask you if it should have access, and if you didn't reinstall XXX you should know something is wrong. For the firewall only ZoneAlarm is free.