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Best Commercial Firewall?

I am not using IE I prefer mozilla a lot safer.

I seem to have safely got through the worms and viruses without infectcion so no complaints and my method is working for me. I also don't download p2p which also helps to stop the viruses.
 
The XP firewall, AKA Internet Connection Sharing, is not 'very basic', it's an average NAT firewall. It simply lacks the extra features that zonealarm has such as outgoing component control (app filtering), logging, and mail protection etc. Saying thay Zonealarm is the best personal firewall solution in my opinion. I'd never use anything from Norton/Symantec or Mcafee due to problems I've had before with conflicts with other programs, hogging the CPU, massive slowdown and update and uninstall problems. Earlier versions of ZA had problems but it is very frequently updated.
 
can we update this thread a little? I'm currently shopping around for a software firewall, so could really use the input...
so which one's currently a good one to get??
 
i use ZoneAlarm Security Suite, it is pretty good. i have been using it for over a year now, no problems with it, i have tried it on more than 50 computers with diffirent specs and it works great. It is very fast and has low memory footprint. I have seen in other forums ppl recomending sygate.
 
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Mark.J said:
I've had too many problems with ZoneAlarm in the past and wouldn't touch them again.

yes, i also have had probs with zone alarm and had to re-format.

i now use sygate and microsofts own (magic) along side of norton for my laptop and tower systems, hope this helps, regards, jv.
 
I use Zone Alarm Security Suite which I find excellent . I have used P-Cillin AVG and Norton in the past but find Zone Alarm is far superior. Provided you turn everything off before installing and Uninstall a previous version first its trouble free. I have also found Zone Alarms support to be worthwhile . they answer within about 24hrs.
 
miffie said:
I use Zone Alarm Security Suite which I find excellent . I have used P-Cillin AVG and Norton in the past but find Zone Alarm is far superior. Provided you turn everything off before installing and Uninstall a previous version first its trouble free. I have also found Zone Alarms support to be worthwhile . they answer within about 24hrs.

When I uninstalled Zonealarm Pro, I found it necessary to clear the password first, otherwise the uninstall locked the PC up. I've also had problems after updating when I've elected not to do a clean install - always uninstall the old version first!

None of the various firewalls I've used have been completely problem free.
 
[QUOTE Mel]None of the various firewalls I've used have been completely problem free.[/QUOTE]
I think you could say that about nearly every piece of software,I dont think any is completely problem free,using the term "completely" literally!(has anybody here had any software that is/has been?)
 
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SteveE said:
(has anybody here had any software that is/has been?)

Yes. I used to fix software bugs for a living, so it was problem free once i'd finished with it (usually :o )
 
Having tried a few I keep comming back to ZoneAlarm, there was a problem a few years ago with it clashing after an update, but they fixed it fairly quickly and I've never had a problem since, I tried Norton's once, it made my PC look like Steve Austin in full flow, (dngngngngngngngngngngngngng), totally stupid system overheads.
 
petezab said:
I use Trend's Internet Security package and I've been impressed with it.

It's not cheap but it's a complete package that includes firewall, AV, spam filter and parental controls. Full details here -

http://www.digitalriver.com/dr/v2/e...ID=618698&DSP=&CUR=840&PGRP=0&CACHE_ID=121189

Yep I use pc cillin security package too. Its great. ONly nag is there are no configuration options, therefore I dont know if its doing its job, as unlike the windows xp firewall, when runnning any program, there is no option to block or unblock . :hrmph:
 
I use NIS and have got use to having reference to the information it can show me. Whether or not this is of any real use or just a good Symantec sales pitch, I am not sure.
I found this comment at www.samspade.org/d/firewalls.html and am interested if anyone else agrees with it.
 
Ucumist said:
I use NIS and have got use to having reference to the information it can show me. Whether or not this is of any real use or just a good Symantec sales pitch, I am not sure.
I found this comment at www.samspade.org/d/firewalls.html and am interested if anyone else agrees with it.

Oh, the snakeoil thing, that's a rather old article.

Since the advent of XP (well MS blaster) even Microsoft recommend firewall protection, have provided an activated firewall with their OS and have amended advice on their support website where it suggested temorarily turning off firewalls. If you are using windows 98 on a standalone (non-networked) PC then a firewall is not essential, although I still consider outbound protection a good idea.

He points out that you can disable services, but neglects to mention that MS updates and installing some applications will sometimes turn them back on for you. A well written personal firewall is a quick easy fix and personally I've got better things to do.

He also points out that outbound protection can easily be circumvented and "if you've run a trojan your system is completely compromised". Now this is true, but you could make a similar case against most anti-virus software (I guess you could even use a similar argument to justify not locking your front door).

Many of the legitimate apps I use what to phone home, some even want to update themselves as and when they please, a few don't even have an option (in the UI at least) to disable this behaviour. Apart from possible privacy issues, I like to update stuff myself and do it when it is convenient - as a rule of thumb, if your computer starts crashing it is more often than not the last thing you've changed that caused it - if you don't know that something has updated itself and it causes problems this can present a headache. If software such as spyware (which often claims to be legitimate and only installed with consent) circumvents firewalls it is likely to be considered rogue and get added to anti-virus signatures. On the few occassions Iv'e been tricked into installing spyware my firewall has detected it while the anti-spyware apps have missed it.

Firewalls can break some networking standards, such as not responding to pings, but I can't recall any personal firewall I've used breaking traceroute other than for inbound traces (if set to 'stealth') but ironically the firewall built into my router does break traceroute - required adding a rule as a workaround.


On dial-up I used a personal firewall, now I have broadband I'm behind a cheap natted (and firewalled) router, but I still use a personal firewall to detect and control outbound traffic.
 
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To Mel
My network is behind a good Vigor router firewall & NAT so maybe the MS on XP would suffice. I can see the snake oil point, a NAT should suffice.
I agree I do want to be able to control outbound traffic and to be able to block specific IP addresses but not all Firewall software can do this.
With the new Sony revelation and spyware being installed by legit corporations, how many others are doing it, and worms like CHOD neutralizing AV software maybe it is better to rely on regular scanning & cleaning.
What do you use to stop unknown things calling home.
 
It is disapointing that you can't even trust the software of seemingly reputable companies like Sony these days. You may not even be able to depend on relatively small AV companies dealing with malware distributed by large corporations for fear of being sued - companies producing anti-spyware apps have already bowed to pressure from spyware vendors where they've claimed their software is legitimate.

I'm currently using Zonealarm (the free version) it lacks a few basic but highly desirable features like password protection on its UI and can only completely allow or completely block internet access for indivisual applications. I'd prefer the pro version because its outbound protection is more difficult to circumvent, but I don't consider it to be worth the extra cost. I may well use Kerio 4 -free for personal use (even when it is no longer supported) when I eventually update the OS. However I'm not that keen on some of the features firewall vendors are adding - things like HTML filtering can actually create new vulnerabilities if the software contains a bug - better to keep it simple.


If I'm suspicious about an app I spy on it with ethereal (the packet sniffer) - I also have a spare boot partition for testing software - usually non commercial free stuff - but perhaps I should be checking all of it :( .

Another reason for keeping my personal firewall is just occassionally I still use dial-up, mostly when my ADSL ISP is broken.
 
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