Firewalls
 

Any recommendations about firewalls? (preferably free) hehe

I use Zone Alarm Pro, but it costs $$.

The free version is still very good.

http://www.zonelabs.com/store/conten...sp?lid=pdb_za1

If you look a little, you can find the free version of Zone Alarm Pro. Good Firewall.

Don't try to get the paid version for free. Thats just wrong.

If you are running WinXP, you can turn on the built in firewall.

Go into your network connections and right click your network connection and select properties. Click the Advanced Tab. Put a check in the box that says Protect my computer. You can click on the Settings button to add other ports to allow access to your computer.

Kerio puts out a free personal firewall that kicks ass. It started out as WinRoute, two East German dudes that defected during the Cold War and started a firewall company. Tiny Software gobbled them up about three years ago, then Kerio bought Tiny's interests about a year ago. It's a tight package, and free for personal use.

http://www.kerio.com/kpf_home.html

ZoneAlarm is a real good software solution, but if you have an old computer laying around and don't mind learning a little linux, I would recommend loading the SonicWall Distro on it and setting up a small home network.

For a wall that is virtually invisible to the user, the XP firewall is about the best.

ZA, at least, requires quite a bit of input from the user. If the user isn't all that computer literate, the user can cause quite a large amount of inconvenience for themselves.

I use Sygate Personal Firewall PRO I like it better then Zone Alarm.

i'd suggest zone alarm too for a free one.

if you buy the norton utilities,you'll get the norton firewall, which i currently use

Windows XP Firewall,. as described above. In spite of the occasional security problem that always make the headlines, the XP firewall works fine. Really.

Norton Internet Security. And if you get the "Pro" version you get Norton Anti-Virus and I believe an extra license for that other computer we all have ...

If your going to run one on your box i would reccomend Outpost. I would also reccomend that you do not run one on the computer. Run an external one such as Sonicwall or Watchgaurd. Any firewall that runs on a computer has the same holes that all other computer based ones have.

Unfortunately, getting a physical firewall tends to be quite expensive for the home user. As such, getting an el cheapo PC with two NICs and using it to do NAT/Firewall work is probably a good solution.

a physical firewall, not an old pc with dual nics, can be obtained for about 180$. Worth it too keep your network secure.

Zone alarm's free version is about as good as free firewalls get.

Zone Alarm

Routers are cheap now Hardware firewalls are always better, but if you want a software soloution i'd get zone alarm my favorite feature is it asks you which programs can use the internet its my best way for troubleshooting trojans and such.

Honestly, I dont put too much stock into retail firewall software. Something about it just bugs me. The programmers leave so many backdoors in their software. But I guess who doesnt? Microshaft is by far the worst though.

err what do you think a hardware firewall runs with scotch mist ? They both use code, both written by programmers, equally capable of having back doors.

POS P100, P133, 486 or similar, 2 NIC's, Smoothwall firewall, Mandrake Single Network Firewall or other similar linux/unix based firewall. Alot of them are free when used in accordance with the GNU licenses. set it up with 64mb - 128mb RAM and a 3gb drive and you've got yourself a basic and functional firewall.

For software firewall to protect a single PC: XP's built in firewall, ZoneAlarm, Norton's firewall, Sonic Guard, etc.

ZoneAlarm is the best free firewall.

I'm pretty sure since my fiancee and I are probably going to get an apartment with a cable modem that we want to set up a hardware firewall, but I dunno what one I should go for.
Or how to configure it.

I use Tiny Personal Firewall, which is excellent. I think it's gone pay now, but the old version (I use 2.0.15, Oct 2001) is great and very configurable. You can set up all sorts of rules for different applications, ports, address ranges etc. Have a look for it; there are still some places offering the old version for download.

I also use zonealarm and find it works very well. The only downside is it can be a bit of a resource hog. So you may want to shut it down and disconnect from the internet for any resource hogging programs (i.e. games).

Why bother with a software firewall
 

When you can get a router built in for very few dollars...

http://store.yahoo.com/unityelectron...rcadslrow.html

The advantage is connecting multiple PCs to your internet connection is easier, you don't have the software firewall eating CPU cycles, if you have trouble with a specific game or protocol you can always set up port forwarding or enable the DMZ forna short while. Most applications will not have a problem if you just plain use it without messing up the settings.

Don't be fooled by the price, this is high quality shiz, the manufacturer discontinued this feature rich model in favor of a cheaper model with fewer features to use as their high end consumer router.

PktFilter (google for it) is a port of OpenBSD's pf (packet filter) to Windows. It's not as easy to configure as ZoneAlarm or other firewalls like that, but it's far more powerful in terms of specifically what protocols, ports, and so on you want to allow or deny.

I prefer a dedicated box for my firewall. I have tested many of the linux-based solutions and have settled on a turn-key setup from Astaro (which is free for home use up to 10 IPs and three NICs).

It's a pretty sweet install, boot off the CD, it wipes the drive and auto-patitions it. You can get up and running with a iptables-based firewall very quickly.

Minimum recommended hardware:
400 MHz CPU, 128 MB RAM, 8 GB IDE or SCSI HDD, Bootable CD-ROM Drive

Pretty good community support, too.

To meet the 'free' requirement, I would have to go with Zoanalarm also. If you have XP, its built in firewall is decent. Neither of these have adequate logging features though. If you want to spend some money the low end Netscreens are very nice and flexible. And if you have money to burn, Cisco Pix will let you do just about anything you want.

All I use now for the software side is Kaspersky Anti-Hacker; an excellent program for $40 US. My main hardware firewall is a 3com router.