This document provides an overview of firewalls. It discusses how firewalls originated from physical barriers used to prevent the spread of fires in buildings in the 19th century. In the 1980s, as internet usage grew and networks became more complex, firewalls were implemented in routers to control network traffic and allocate different networks. The document then profiles some key individuals like Clifford Stoll and Bill Cheswick who brought awareness to firewall security. It defines a firewall as a program or hardware device that filters authorized and unauthorized network data and traffic based on administrator-set rules. Finally, it outlines the evolution of different firewall generations from packet filters to stateful filters.